Day 321 Repaying the Choctaw Native Americans kindness

In the run up to my big 4-0 next year, I have decided to have a year of positivity about Ireland. Each day I will have a new fact or reason to be positive about Ireland and doing business here. You can follow the journey on my Facebook page.

Day 321 Repaying the Choctaw Native Americans kindness

A symbolic sculpture is to be erect to commemorate the gift of $710 to the Irish people during the famine by the Choctaw people. This money was collected as gesture of support by the Native Americans to the Irish suffering during the famine years and would be worth over $1 million in today’s money. Sculptor, Alex Pentek ‘Kindred Spirit’ design has been selected, a steel structure of nine eagle feathers to be installed in Bailic Park, in Midleton Co. Cork. Read more here.

Day 320 Lucey Fund to invest a further €4M in StartUps

The Lucey fund in last 3 years has invested over €4.3M in over 40 startups and is set to invest up to another €4M in 30-40 startups this year. The brainchild of Ian Lucey, the fund was set up to match companies with good ideas with technologists and product developers which can make those ideas a reality. The fund has invested in companies such as MedxNote, a mobile messaging app for doctors and Mart365 allowing real time prices on livestock and crops for framers. The fund was also a early investor in fashion tech start up Von Bismark, which has know went to raise €600K in subsequent rounds.

Day 319 Coindrum, turning loose coins into gold

Irish based startup Coindrum has came up with ingenious to deal with left over currency coins which the traveller may never use again. By having a special coin receiving machine in airport departures, Coindrum allows the user to get a voucher to use in airport shops instead of carrying the change. Users can also opt to give their spare currency to charity. A successful pilot has been set up in Dublin and Knock airports and the company is set to expand to global hubs. Coindrum founder, UCD graduate Lukas Decker has attracted some big hitter investors such as Declan Ryan and Tipperary Crystal managing director Declan Fearon. He has also been named Dublin Young Entrepreneur of the Year and picked up the 1776 Challenge Cup Dublin win.

Day 318 Dublin comes in 8th Global Tech Cities Survey

Property consultants Savills survey of world cities has placed Dublin 8th in terms of Tech Cities. The scores were measured according to five metrics: business environment, tech environment, quality of life, talent pool and property affordability. Dublin beat out Berlin due to presence of tech multination, corporate tax rate and the Web Summit. Read more here.

Day 317 Ireland in Global Top 20 for fastest growing economies

In the Bloomberg analysis of forecasted GDP has placed Ireland in 18th alongside Mexico and Signapore with 3.2% predicted increase in GDP in 2015. Poland is the only other EU country in the top 20. Read more here.

Day 316 Ireland at the leading edge of Sports Tech Start Ups

Ireland has always been passionate about sports and this passion has been translated into business with exciting world class start ups emerging in various fields from software, nutrition, internet of things to media content. I have list examples of these companies which are completing on the global stage for Ireland!

Game Golf Galway based firm with the world's first automatic shot tracking system for golfers. The company had a huge boost last year when President Obama was seen wearing their device

Kitman Labs Dublin based company building the World's most advanced athlete management system to reduce the risk of injury within professional sports. Backed by Irish rugby star, Jamie Heaslip the company has expanded into the US

Orecco Sligo based firm provide biomarker analysis for world leading athletes, federations and professional franchises clients Newcastle FC, Formula 1 and several golf players.

Pundit Arena Cork based a sports media website powered by articulate fans, and aspiring and experienced sports writers. The start up had global success with their “19-guys-you-always-see-at-five-a-side” which went viral last year

Wyldsson Dublin based Sports Nutrition providing healthy snacks to high performance sport people which now list Irish, English and Scottish National rugby teams, Team Sky Cycling, pro-snowboarder Aimee Fuller, stars of LA Lakers and QPR plus plenty of golf clients as clients.

Day 315 Peer to Peer lending, Linked Finance raises its own €2.5M

Linked Finance is Irish peer to peer lending platform giving small business an alternative from borrowing from banks. With over 8000 people signed up they have helped over 200 companies raising over €5M in funding leading to creation of over 1000 jobs. Local venture capital firm Frontline Ventures has invested €2.5M to assist in the expansion of their services to help 5000 SMEs and creating 40,000 jobs over the next three years. Read more here.

Day 314 Apple to open its largest European Data centre in Athenry, Galway

Apple is set to invest €850M in Athenry, Galway to create its largest data centre in Europe. The greenfield site is set to employ 300 people and is to serve Apple’s online services such as iTunes. The site will use renewable energy and will be linked up to a similar site in Denmark. Read more here.

Day 313 Brazilian love letter to Cork and UCC

23 year old Brazilian student, Raul Soares has created a video to express his love to the city of Cork and the University. The civil engineering student spends a day going around the Campus and city showing big love for the sites and the people of Cork. Watch the video here:

Day 312 New ‘Blue Sky’ Labs in Waterford to fight blindness

The Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) have launched two new laboratories to fight blindness with a €4M investment from WIT, Howard Foundation and Nutrasight. The two new labs will assist the Macular Pigment research of Prof John Nolan which is developing more efficient methods for harvesting lutein, a nutrient essential for optimal vision and protection against the leading case of blindness, age-related macular degeneration. Read more here.

Day 311 Harvard Business Review Digital Evolution Index has Ireland as a STAND OUT economy

Harvard Business Review created a Digital Evolution Index via The Fletcher School at Tufts University to see the current status of digital economies and which are moving the fastest. The Index has Ireland as one of the top performing our STAND OUT meaning Ireland has shown high levels of digital development in the past and continues to remain on an upward trajectory. Other countries in this classification include USA, Singapore, Israel, Hong Kong, South Korea, New Zealand and UAE. Read more here.

Day 310 FarmFlo software solutions to the farmer designed by farmers

Founded by Donegal brothers, Jason and Gareth Devenney in 2011, FarmFlo was created to help farmers keep up to date with the paperwork. With local and EU regulations farmers can be weighted down with paperwork and using their framing background the brothers developed a software solution to allow farmers update their data realtime dramatically reducing the time required for reporting. The startup has seen popularity of their product both in Ireland and UK and was recently officially approved by Department of Agriculture for farming software. Read more here.

Day 309 VC investment soars by 41% in Irish firms in 2014

Last year saw a huge increase in venture capital investment in Irish firms. A total of €401M was invested in Irish start-ups according to VenturePulse survey by the Irish Venture Capital Association; this was 41% increase from 2013. Since 2008, over 1000 companies have raised €2.1bn in capital. Read more here.

Day 308 Irish Scientists have Multiple Sclerosis breakthrough

Researchers at Trinity College Dublin have led an international group to develop a new drug to treat Multiple Sclerosis. The drug, MCC950 was discovered to stop the inflammation response (via NLRP3) at very early stage allowing the treatment of many conditions such as Multiple Sclerosis, blood poisoning and a rare Muckle-Wells syndrome which can cause progressive hearing loss and kidney damage. The group led by Prof Luke O’Neill sees the discovery as one of biggest of his career and the group are forming a company to further develop the drug further. Luke’s discoveries have previous use to form one of Ireland’s most successful biotechs, Opsona. Read more here.

Day 307 Ireland’s historic win against West Indies at World Cup

Ireland’s Cricket team have pull off a historic win at their opening match against the West Indies. Chasing down a total of over 300, the Irish team where able to overhaul the three time champions at the World Cup held in New Zealand. This continues Ireland’s success in the World Cup against test-playing teams after previous victories over Pakistan and Bangladesh in 2007 and England in 2011. The team need to win another two matches in their next five to qualify for the quarter finals. Read more here.

Day 306 Ireland leads the world in Female lawyer levels

Ireland has become the first country in the world to have more women lawyers than men. At the end of 2014, there were 4,623 female solicitors and 4,609 male solicitors and this comes 92 years after the first female solicitor, Mary Dorothea Heron, was admitted. It how hope that this equality will be demonstrated at partner level at major law firms. Read more here.

Day 305 St Valentine’s final home in Dublin

As today is the international day for celebrating love and Dublin is the centre of the tradition. The final resting place of the patron saint of Love, St Valentine are to be found in a church in Dublin. In 1835 an Irish Carmelite priest, Fr. John Spratt, used his Irish charm to convince then Pope Gregory XVI to dig up St. Valentine’s remains and take them home as a gift to his fellow Irishmen and women and were placed in Whitefriar Street church in Dublin. The church is opening all weekend to allow love seekers a chance to come and visit the shrine. Read more here.

Day 304 Ambisense leading innovation in environmental monitoring

Ambisense is Dublin City University spin-out focused on developing next generation sensor technologies. Using sensor technology to target compliance and process monitoring applications in environmental settings. Founded by scientists from National Centre for Sensor Research (NCSR) in DCU the technology enables automated, continuous monitoring of any process from any location at a fraction of the existing cost and the company is initially targeting the landfill and biogas monitoring sectors and will then expand into other areas such as shale oil/gas, contaminated land monitoring, mining, and air quality. Ambisense is now selling in Ireland, UK and has been nominated for the Irish Times innovation awards. Read more here.

Cork based start up, Metabolomic Diagnostics has secured €750K investment from SOSventures, Enterprise Ireland and the AIB Seed Capital Fund. Pre-eclampsia affects between 5-8% of all pregnancies and if undetected can lead to life threatening seizures with an estimated 80,000 deaths globally each year. The company is currently developing its PrePsia technology to help the early detection of the condition. Read more here.

Day 302 Irish student wins Global Design Award

Laurie Concannon, a design student from Dublin Institute of Design has won the inaugural Yamaha GDAY global graphic design award, being selected as overall winner from 1,100 designers in 69 countries. The challenge was to create a Graphic Form of Kandō – the Japanese word ‘for the heart’ or ‘to be deeply moved with’ which is a part of Yamaha’s core philosophy for a $10,000 prize. Another Irish based student, Faryl Roberts was successful in picking up the audience prize. Read more here.

Day 301 NUI Galway and DCU receive top marks in global survey

In survey by U-Multirank, a research agency part-funded by the European Commission, analysing performance indicators of international orientation related to teaching and learning, doctoral training, research and the composition of academic staff. Two Irish universities, NUI Galway and DCU received the highest or A grade in all four components. Only 27 universities globally received the top marks and this survey places Irish institutions in 5th place alongside those of Switzerland and Sweden. Read more here.

Day 300 Bia Beauty, Cork’s innovative edible skincare products

Cork based entrepreneur Tracey Ryan has developed an innovative range of natural skincare products using only edible ingredients such as mandarin, honey, comfrey, and avocado. Her company Bia Beauty has not only won beauty awards but innovation and business awards and grants. Currently her products are stocked in Avoca, Meadows & Byrne, and Lloyd’s pharmacies and she has secured suppliers in UK and hoping to launch in Germany shortly. Read more here.

Day 299 Drone tech start up Verifly lands in Dublin

Founder of the popular Taxi app, Hailo, Jay Bregman is setting up a new drone tech company which have its engineering and operation staff in Dublin. Verifly will aim to become the world's central "verification" control systems for drones as expected that there will an exponential increase in the number of drones over already crowded skies. Read more here.

Day 298 Inspiring Ireland, showcasing a nation’s cultural heritage

Inspiring Ireland is an ambitious project run by Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) to share high quality images of Ireland’s treasured cultural assets in a single curated, interactive website. Their first pilot interactive project "A Sense of Place" is showcasing objects from institutes across Ireland showing how place resonates through time. The project swept the board at the eGovernment awards winning ‘Promoting Ireland Overseas’, ‘Open Source’, and ‘Overall Winner’. Read more here.

Day 297 National Geographic makes Kerry’s Ross Castle its coverstar

The February/March edition of National Geographic Traveler has Ross Castle in Killarney, Co Kerry gracing its cover. In the feature, entitled ‘Return to Ireland’, the magazine has an 11 page feature on American actor, Andrew McCarthy travels around Kerry. It is hoped that the article will provide additional boost to the number of American visitors to Ireland which was increased by 13% last year making 2014 the best ever year for tourism. Read more here.

Day 296 LIFE2GOOD lives up to its name with expansion & investment

Galway based LIFE2GOOD has announced major expansion of 50 jobs and €5 million investment from BDO Development Capital Fund. The healthcare company focuses on the international sales, marketing and distribution of clinical proven healthcare brands. Founded in 1997 by James Murphy the company has seen massive growth in services and James was nominated as EY Entrepreneur of the Year Ireland in 2013. Read more here.

Day 294 Hibergene Diagnostics leading the fight against Meningitis

A spinout of Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, Hibergene Diagnostics has just secured €2M investment from Kernel Capital, through the Bank of Ireland MedTech Accelerator Fund, Enterprise Ireland and private investors. The company based in NovaUCD has developed a molecular diagnostics test for detecting meningococcal meningitis and Group B streptococcus in a hospital setting using its novel LAMP PCR technology. Early detection of both is essential for survival of patients. Read more here.

Day 293 Dairy Innovation Centre coming to Limerick

The Government have announced a new €25M investment in a new dairy research and innovation centre to be based at University of Limerick. In this collaboration between Government, industry and academia is looking to position Ireland as the world leader in diary innovation as this investment hopes to take advantage of end of milk quotas across Europe and the development of high-end products such as protein enriched milk. The centre hopes to employ 52 people when fully operational. Read more here.

Day 292 Brigid’s crosses and the start of spring

Although it may not feel like it, today is the tradition start of spring. Going back to the pagan festival of Imbolc associated with the goddess Brigid which involved making of dolls and crosses to celebrate the coming spring. After Christianization, the tradition of St Brigid day continued and the crosses have become one of the symbols of Ireland. Birgid crosses are traditionally made by children and are placed over doors or windows to protect home from harm. Watch this video to see how to make your own cross.

The country road with intertwined trees know as Dark Hedges outside Ballymoney, Co Antrim has been voted in the Top 10 out of this world places by users of Skyscanner. Many people will recognise the road from film of HBO’s Game of Throne as it featured several times. Read more here.

Day 290 Theya lingerie, innovation for cancer patients

Theya lingerie has launched their product range for post-operative lingerie suitable for women who are recovering from breast cancer surgery, cosmetic surgery and/or undergoing radiotherapy treatment at Salon International de la Lingerie fair in Paris. The lingerie is seam and wire-free and is made from innovative material OEKO-TEX® which is derived from Bamboo and is 300% more absorbent than cotton, wickable and has anti-bacterial properties all of which help with the healing process. The company founded by Ciara Donlon is based at NovaUCD and is taking advantage of the clinical research capabilities at the university. Theya’s products will be available in Arnotts in Dublin from February or from their company website. Read more here.

Day 288 Ireland 3rd easiest place to do business in!

Ireland has came out 3rd in a Global survey of 81 countries in terms of doing business for multinationals with Jersey and Hong Kong taking the top spot. TMF Group’s Global Benchmark Complexity Index. Ireland’s ranking to set to improve in 2015 with new legistation being put in place allowing companies to be incorporated with one director instead of current two directors. Read more here.

Day 287 Oneview Healthcare signs major deal with Dubai Hospitals

Dublin based, Oneview Healthcare has signed a major deal with two hospitals in Dubai. The Mediclinic City Hospital and Mediclinic Welcare Hospital will take up Oneview’s products by March allowing the hospital IT system to integrate across devices such as bedside terminals, televisions, tablets and smartphones. This allows patients to book appointments, receive educational material specific to their condition and access test results. The company had previously rolled out deals in the US and Australia and this is their first Middle Eastern contract. Read more here.

Day 286 UCD Michael Smurfit Business School soars in Global MBA rankings

UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School’s MBA programme has seen a huge increase in the Global ranking complied by the Financial Times. The only Irish school in the ranking, the school has risen 18 places in the rankings and is now ranked 73rd in the world and the programme seen as 9th in the world in terms of value for money. Read more here.

Day 285 Irish Olympic Skier, Kirsty McGarry takes first GS win

Irish Olympic Skier, Kirsty McGarry has made history in by placing 1st in the Grand Slalom at the infamous ‘inferno’ race in Mürren in the Swiss Alps. Kirsty became the first non-Swiss or German do do. The race is the longest downhill in the world (15.8km) while over 1800 competitors took part and Kirsty finished less than a second ahead of nearest challenger Nicole Almer and 9th overall. Read more here.

Day 284 Two Irish B&B’s in World Top 10

Ireland’s legendary hospitality has been demonstrated again by two Irish bed & breakfasts being named in TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice 2015 awards Global Top 10 B&Bs. Shona Coach House in Portrush, Co Antrim was ranked 2nd in the world by travellers reviews on TripAdvisor. The Down Yonder B&B at Rossess Point, Co Silgo came out 10th in the ranking. Read more here.

Day 283 Brite:Bill sees North American expansion

Irish billing software company, Brite:Bill is adding an extra 100 staff after winning a major North American contract. With offices in Dublin, London, Shanghai and San Francisco, the company provides a hassle-free solution to customer billing and were award Cool Vendor Award by Gartner in 2014. Read more here.

Entrepreneur Jane Ní Dhulchaointigh and her company Sugru has been named among 7 Tech Superheroes by CNN. Driven by desire to fix items rather than throw them when at college, Jane came up with moldable glue that can fix to anything and converts to strong, flexible overnight. Read more here.

Day 281 World Aviation Financiers gather in Dublin

Ireland continues to secure its place as the global centre for aircraft leasing and financing. This week sees over 1,200 aircraft finance professionals from 65 countries will gather in Dublin for the most important conference for aviation finance. Several of the global leaders in aircraft leasing are headquartered in Ireland with one in five of the world’s commercial aircraft managed from Ireland. Read more here.

Day 280 Taking Surf Boards to California

Northern Irish brothers Chris and Ricky Martin have just return from an investment trip to the West Coast with NI Tech Mission. After running the successful Alive Surf School in Portrush, the brothers came up with a new innovation for learner surf board or foamies to make the more robust and environmental friendly. Their Skunk Works Surfboard Company based in Coleraine has now have a patent pending process to develop an almost indestructible surf board that doesn’t uses glues or adhesives and had been described as a “yoga mat on steroids”. Read more here.

Day 279 Ireland has the 7th fastest broadband globally

A new report from Akamai called State of the Internet has Ireland ranked in the top tier of global broadband. Coming 7th globally and 4th in Europe, Ireland has faster broadband than UK, Norway and Germany. Read more here.

Day 278 Dublin voted 5th best Globally for Shopping

Dublin shops rank amongst the best in the world. Readers of Conde Nast Traveller magazine rated Dublin above London, Paris or New York. The magazine singled out the capital’s 'Creative Quarter' as a must-see, heaping praise on the area's eclectic mix of shops, cafes, galleries and restaurants. Barcelona, Philadelphia, Hong Kong and Chicago round out the top 5. Read more here.

Galway based medtech firm Veryan has raised €23.5M ($27.4M) to advance its next generation self-expanding stent which is in the rapid growing peripheral stent market to treat narrowing or blocking of blood vessels. The investment round led by Imperial Innovations led the round along with co-investors Invesco Asset Management, Seroba Kernel and Seven Mile. Veryan’s first product BioMimics stent as a helical shape that more closely mimics blood vessels' natural shape, improving blood flow and providing greater flexibility, kink and fracture resistance compared to traditional stents. Read more here.

Day 276 Oscar Nominations for Irish films

The Oscar nominations saw Irish nominated in three categories. Song of the Sea from Cartoon Saloon, an animation firm based in Kilkenny, is in the running for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Dublin production designer, Annie Atkins was nominated for Best Design and production award for Grand Budapest Hotel. Finally Northern Irish short film called Boogaloo and Graham has been nominated for Best Short Film. Read more here.

Day 275 Irish food & drink exports hit €10.5 Billion in 2014

Irish food & drink exports had a bumper 2014, increasing by 4% to €10.5B, meaning €200M of goods were exported every week last year. Irish Whiskey was one of the strongest performers with 7M cases of whiskey exported in 2014, this is expected to grow to 25M by 2030. The Asian market has become Ireland lead market outside the EU with a massive 45% increase in exports to €850M. Read more here.

Day 274 NDRC companies raise €37M & create 200 jobs

Ireland’s leading start up accelerator and investor, NDRC, saw their portfolio companies raised €37M in additional investments in 2014. Big investments include Adama Innovations, which raised €600,000, Adaptics (Drop), which raised €2M, NVMdurance, which raised €600K, Pharmapod, which raised €750,000K, and Video Elephant, which raised €1M. Their portfolios companies now employ 500 people a jump of 200 from last year. NDRC portfolio also includes companies such as NewsWhip, Boxever, FieldAware, LogEntries and Soundwave. Read more here.

Enterprise Ireland client companies created almost 20,000 jobs last year. The total number of people employed in Enterprise Ireland client companies now stands at 180,072. Internationally Traded Services & Software Sector for the second year in the row had the largest increase in jobs. Read more here.

Day 272 Green Shoots Programme for Cork’s emerging entrepreneurs

Now in its fifth year, the Green Shoots program is a dynamic program for helping emerging entrepreneurs in Cork. Based at the Macroom Enterprise Centre, budding entrepreneurs are provided with free shared office space, weekly training workshops and guidance from established entrepreneurs. Alumni of the program include Attila Magyar from Mamukko, a company which turns sails from tall ships in ethically designed luggage and bags. Also Ed Donovan from Advanced Medical Screening, a leading provider of cardiac screening in Ireland with GPA, Laya Healthcare and Irish Rugby as clients. Applications for this year program close on 21st January. Read more here.

Day 271 Cork Airport, leading global innovator

Cork Airport has yet again came up with a world first, the airport’s app available on iTunes and Google Play is now allowing live fight tracking, showing aircraft route, speed, type of aircraft, altitude, distance traveled and total distance to destination. The App has also a live map of flights in and out of Cork Airport in real time all provided by Flighttracker24. This innovation comes after Cork Airport became the first airport in Ireland to make Google Indoor maps available for all of its public areas. Read more here.

Day 270 BT Young Scientist showcasing the next generation of world class scientists and entrepreneurs

Last night saw Ian O’Sullivan and Eimear Murphy from Coláiste Treasa in Cork being declared the winners of BT Young Scientists of 2015 for their study on the parental effects of alcohol consumption. The competition which is over 50th has produced winners which have gone on to be world class scientists and entrepreneurs. Recently examples include Patrick Collison who with his brother went to formvone of Ireland’s most exciting start-ups, Stripe in Silicon Valley. Runners up in 2009, Eimear O'Carroll and Rhona Togher have founded a company from their project, Restored Hearing for the treatment of tinnitus. Winners of 2013, Ciara Judge, Emer Hickey and Sophie Healy-Thow went on to have international success winning Google’s Science Fair last year. Read more here.

Irish venture capital fund, Fountain Healthcare has raised a second fund of €85M to invest in the areas of specialty pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices and diagnostics. They expect to invest in between 10 and 15 companies mostly in Europe but also balancing with opportunities in the US. Fountain has €158M under management, making them the largest lifesciences funders in Ireland and they are looking to expand this current fund to €125M. Read more here.

Day 268 Irish StartUps numbers soar in 2014

Last year saw the largest increase of new companies forming since the banking crisis. Figures provided by Vision-Net showed that nearly 18,000 new companies were registered. The figures show that many industries such as IT, 2014 was biggest year for Startups since 2000. Read more here.

Day 267 Irish Law Firms amongst the world’s best for M&A

Three Irish law firms have rocketed up the European rankings by Thomson Reuters based on M&A activity. Top placing was A&L Goodbody coming in at 18th with a total of $64.77bn (€54bn) value of M&A advised on last year. Matheson was ranked 20th and Arthur Cox came in at 22nd. Read more here.

IDA Ireland, the Irish government agency responsible for attracting FDI in their annual summary have shown they have created 15,012 new jobs with a record breaking 174,488 people employed in their client firms. IDA estimates that for every 10 jobs generated by FDI another seven are generated in the wider economy. Their results also show 88 first time investors firms setting up in Ireland. Read more here.

Day 265 Irish Beef back on US menus

The import ban of Irish beef into the US has been lifted. Ireland has become the EU country to gain permission to enter the US market since the BSE scare 15 years ago. It is expected Irish framers will sell €50-€100 million of the meat into the US market in 2015. Read more here.

Day 264 Ireland 4th Most Charitable Nation

According to the World Giving Index 2014, which lists of most charitable nations based on donations, volunteer work and helping strangers, Ireland has maintained its position as Europe’s most charitable nation and increased to 4th globally from 5th in 2013. The figures show that 66% of population gave to charity while 71% did voluntary work and 44% helped strangers. Read more here.

Day 263 Irish Manufacturing Sector ends 2014 on a high

The PMI (Purchasing Managers' Index) showed that Ireland’s industrial sector ended the year on the highest level since 2010. Ireland is outperforming its Eurozone counterparts with a figure of 56.9 compared Eurozone average of 50.6. Read more here.

Day 262 Ireland is leading the way in CleanTech

The CleanTech industry is set to create nearly 80,000 jobs across the Irish economy and boost GDP by €3.9 billion by 2020. Ireland ranks 5th in the 2014 Global Cleantech Innovation Index in terms of its emerging Cleantech Innovations. A report by The Greenway, Dublin’s Cleantech cluster, shows there is a vibrant community of 540 cleantech companies in Ireland across 10 separate categories. Read more here.

Day 261 Welcoming UTV Ireland

Today’s sees the national launch of Ulster Television’s UTV Ireland. Kicking off with the Emmerdale soap opera the first night will also see the return to television of broadcaster Pat Kenny. The new station has created 100 new jobs at their Dublin Docklands headquarters. Read more here.

Day 260 SMEs predict up to 60,000 new jobs in 2015

Irish SMEs are feeling bullish and are set to add 60,000 jobs to the emerging Irish economy. The ISME survey shows that despite potential future issues small firms and business are feeling bullish about their prospects in 2015. Read more here.

Day 259 One Million see the Cliffs of Moher

The Cliffs of Moher in Co Clare are one of Ireland’s most beautiful areas of natural beauty have seen a 12.5% increase in visitors this year, making a record breaking over million visitors. The cliffs run for 8KM along the Clare Atlantic coast reaching 702 feet at their peak. The Cliffs get their name from Irish word 'mothar' - which means "ruined fort" as the site had a fort in 1st Century BC. This year’s increase in numbers is largely due to the Wild Atlantic Way campaign launched by Tourism Ireland earlier this year. Read more here.

Day 258 Irish Stock Exchange is top international performer

Irish Stock Exchange (ISEQ) overall has been one of the top international performer in 2014. With 2 days of 2014 trading left the overall index has hit over 5200 the highest level since 2007. This is due to strong performance from shares from Aer Lingus, CRH and Kerry group. This represents over 16% increase for the year, this increase outranks other international indexes such as FTSE-100 (1.26%), DAX (4.6%), CAC-100 (1.84%), IBEX 35 (10.8%), DOW (9.56%) NASDAQ (15.6%). Read more here.

Day 257 Cork harbour to become the ‘Sydney of Europe’

A major a landmark redevelopment programme championed by Marine Minister Simon Coveney, will turn Cork Harbour to world class attraction by 2018. The estimated €1 Billion project will include the development of Spike Island as an Irish-style Alcatraz or Robben Island old Irish Steel/Irish Ispat site on Haulbowline Island and the conversion of Spike Island into Irish-style Alcatraz. Other projects include a new multimillion cruise terminal for Cobh, and the Port of Cork's new deepwater berth at Ringaskiddy. Read more here.

Day 256 S&P predicts unemployment to fall below 10%

Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) produced a positive outlook on Irish economy with a fall in unemployment to 9.7 per cent in 2016 from 11.2 per cent in 2014. They also view Ireland GDP grow by 4.5% next year as well. Read more here.

Day 255 Trinity College amongst the top universities for employability

Trinity College Dublin is 110th in the world and 53rd in Europe for employability of its graduates in a new ranking of the Top 150 universities in the world. The survey carried out by French HR consultancy Emerging and German polling institute Trendence on 4,500 recruiters from major companies in 20 different countries are looking for in university systems round the world. Read more here.

Day 254 Santanomics, Irish most generous country at Christmas

Ireland has regained its top spot as the most generous country in the world when it comes to Christmas. In a PWC survey, the average Irish person spends nearly $1,200 for the celebration with the whole country spending a total $5 Billion. This data will bring a little extra festive cheer to the retail sector. Read more here.

Day 253 1D wears Dubliner's Funky Christmas Jumpers

One Direction wore festive Christmas Jumpers on the Jimmy Fallon’s show this week supplied by the Dublin firm, Funky Christmas Jumpers. Since the show, founders Donal McSharry and Fabio Molle have been inundated by requests and have had over 20,000 retweets. Read more here.

Day 252 Seagate leads the way, in €3.77 BN total Irish R&D investment

Seagate leads the way in investing €889 million in R&D making it 126th highest spend in the world. 17 Ireland-based firms are in the top 2,500 R&D investors with total €3.77 Billion spend. Leading firms include Accenture, Actavis, Covidien, Bank of Ireland, Kerry Group, AIB, Jazz Pharma and Trinity Biotech. Read more here.

Day 251 Building Eye secures Silicon Valley partnership

Irish startup Building Eye has secured a partnership with the Palo Alto city authorities. The company has developed a data visualisation tool for government that maps planning applications, building permits, capital projects and building code infringements. The tool is also accessible by the public allow them the freedom to find out and to be updated about local planning. Founded by civil engineer, Ciaran Gilsenan, the company has secured €500K ($610K) funding from Enterprise Ireland, Frontline Ventures and Angel Investors and is expanding their service to cover US cities. Read more here.

Day 250 Santa’s resting place in Ireland

Local Irish historians believe that they have strong evidence that the final resting place for the real Santa Claus, St Nicholas is in Ireland. St Nicholas of Myra, the Christian saint who inspired the legend of Santa, is thought to be buried in the ancient graveyard of a church in the lost medieval city of Nwerown Jerpoint near Thomastown in Kilkenny. The grave at St Nicholas Church which bear a striking slab is believed to hold remains which were relocated to Ireland by a local Norman family who had be involved in crusades in the Holy Land and moved to Ireland in 12th Century. Local community figures are hoping that the grave will create a tourism bonanza for the local area. Read more here.

Day 249 Northern Ireland Science Park set to expand

After taking over a derelict piece of land in Belfast’s ship building area, Northern Ireland Science Park (NISP) has become a dramatic success. With an annual turnover of ₤4M ($5.1M), the park has been able to attract big names such as CITI and Qualcomm as well as exciting local startups such as DisplayNote, Taggled and Pure Marine. NISP also has Queen's University's cyber crime-fighting unit CSIT and ESIT, the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology. The NISP angel fund or HALO and networking service NISP Connect have also shown great promise. Now at 100% occupancy the Belfast site at Titanic Docks is going to expand to add a new concourse. Read more here.

Day 248 Ireland takes home two major US tourism awards

Ireland has been named the ‘Best Destination Europe’ by Travel Weekly annual Readers Choice Awards in New York this week, followed by picking up Best Tourism Destination' at the 2014 Global Traveller Tested Awards for the 4th time. These awards came in the same week as a glowing write up in the New York Times which described Dublin as ‘walking into a Christmas card’. Read more here.

Day 247 Dublin 4th in Global Cities of the Future by fDi Magazine

Dublin ranked 4th among 130 global cities of the future by study by fDi Magazine. The fDi Intelligence division analysed these locations for Economic Potential; Business Friendliness, Human Capital and Lifestyle, Cost Effectiveness, and Connectivity. Surveys and FDI Strategy Dublin was first for large city Business Friendliness; second for Human Capital and Lifestyle; as well as second for Economic Potential.

Day 246 DisplayNote, the future of education and knowledge sharing

Belfast based startup DisplayNote builds technologies that are designed to make it easier for people to present, share, connect and collaborate in real-time across large-format displays, desktop and mobile devices. In the classroom, where students have brought their own devices, DisplayNote app allows the teacher to mirror what’s on their PC to more than 40 devices at the same time. They can share lessons or any content from their computers and students can take screenshots, make notes or instantly capture the content of the lesson to their device. This year the company has raised €1.25m in Series A funding from the Bank of Ireland Kernel Capital Venture Fund. The company won Technologist of the year award at AV News Awards as well as being nominated in BETT 2015 awards.

NDRC have launched FutureHealth pre-accelerator to bring disruptive innovation to develop new healthcare ventures. Previously NDRC has been involved in investing and developing over 20 healthcare companies such as SilverCloud Health, PharmaPod, Clearsight Innovation and MuteButton. Working with UCD, EY and Enterprise Ireland partners the programme is seeking to bring 10 separate teams through an 8 week pre-accelerator to evaluate new ideas and transform them to high impact ventures which have investment potential. Closing date for application is 15th Jan and the pre-accelerator will kick off in early February. Read more here.

Day 244 Sedicii cybersecurity firm scoops another award

Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) campus cybersecurity company, Sedicii has won, EY Startup Challenge, an intensive 6-week innovation programme focused on accelerating technological solutions for a business problem of tomorrow based in London. Sedicii has developed technology that authenticates users without the need to transmit private information over the internet or to store that private information on servers. Sedicii has also won awards Irish IP awards and EU IPACSO awards.

Day 243 Andy Lee wins WBO title

30 year old Limerick man Andy Lee became the first Irish man in 20 years to win the middleweight title. Fighting Matt Korobov in Las Vegas, the fight was stopped in the sixth round. Read more here.

Day 242 Avolon, Ireland’s biggest NYSE debut

Irish aircraft leasing company Avolon made a record breaking $1.6 BN debut on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday. Avolon has an order book valued at $6 billion, which includes Airbus A330-neo craft and Boeing’s Dreamliner. The CEO, Dómhnal Slattery , previous worked at GPA and although ultimately unsuccessful he saw GPA provided a foundation for what has made Ireland one of the world's major centres for aircraft leasing and aviation finance. Read more here.

Day 241 Co Couture Win International Chocolate award

Belfast based chocolatier Co Couture has picked up a coveted silver medal in the prestigious International Chocolate Awards World Finals 2014 with its Japanese Cherry Sencha 70%. The company came up with concept working with local firm, Suki Tea. Some of their other products have been given accolades by the Guild of Fine Food awarded their Irish Whisky Truffle the coveted 3 Gold stars in the Great Taste Awards and their Dark Chocolate with Biscuit & Cranberry also received 2 Gold stars. Read more here.

Day 240 SUXmas is here! Celebrating Irish startups!

SUXmas, or Start-Up Christmas, kicks off tonight. The event is designed by members of the start-up community to join Irish start-ups together for a big end of year celebration. The sold out event is expecting over 300 people to help spread the festive cheer. Led by Fionnuala Healy, Gene Murphy, Clyde Hutchinson and a multitude of elves from the start-up community, the event is supported by MasterCard StartPath, Circle, DCU Ryan Academy, Bank of Ireland, StartUp Dublin, FinTech Innovation Labs, NDRC, Wayra, NASC Connect, ClearPreso, Paul Hayes, Mason Hayes & Curran and Eventbrite. The event is also hoping raise some much needed cash for the homeless charity Focus Ireland.

Day 239 Nuritas discovers new MRSA killing peptide

University College Dublin spin out Nuritas has become one of the most exciting emerging biotechs in Ireland. Using bioinformatics and data mining the company seeks to discover natural peptides that can be used as life-changing ingredients that can be added to personal care products, supplements, food or biocides. Led by Dr. Nora Khaldi, the team has recently uncovered a peptide in a food by-product that can kill the antibiotic resistant superbug MRSA. This is a key advance in the production of the new generation of natural antibiotics. The company is currently a part of the NDRC Venture Lab programme, which provides support and investment to early stage scitech companies. Read more here.

Day 238 Cleverbug enabling Christmas cheer via cards & social media

Cleverbug is the Irish personal card app company. Clever Cards via Cleverbug allows users to create greeting cards using their own or stock photos for delivery worldwide. The company rose €4.5M (€5.4M) in funding this year from Delta partners to update their service to allow digital greeting cards with video and audio to be sent via WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. So far over 100 million people have interacted with Cleverbug services and this number is set to increase to enable Diaspora and family groups celebrate during the holiday season. Read more here.

Day 237 Eamon Keane of Xpreso named Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur

Eamon Keane from Xpreso has beaten over 1,000 entries to be named Ireland’s best young entrepreneur. Eamon co-founded Xpreso, a SaaS solution allowing delivery companies to increase first-time success rate by offering online customers dynamic tracking and accurate arrival times. Eamon also received €50K ($60K) investment as part of the award. Dean Gammell from The Group System took the Best Established Business award and Philip Martin from Blanco Nino received the Best New Idea prize. Read more here.

Day 236 Record tourist year!

This year Ireland saw a record number of tourist visit our shores. Over 7.3 million people came to visit and see the sights up 8% from last year. This record number added € 3.7 Billion to the economy. By 2025 Tourism Ireland aims to attract 10 million visitors a year to Ireland, generating €5 billion for the economy, and helping to sustain 250,000 jobs. Read more here.

Day 235 Taggled scores major US contract

Belfast based startup Taggled has just signed a deal with major US retailer, ShopStyle. Taggled based in Northern Ireland Science Park in the Titanic Quarter allows bloggers to add clickable product/people/place/music tags within their video links to retailers on their video and get paid if viewers purchase via the link. With the deal with ShopStyle, the company is hoping to bring 10,000 new users and keep the US firm at the forefront of online fashion technology. Taggled was founded by Ian Scott, a serial entrepreneur previously set up the tech company, Lemma Solutions. Read more here.

Day 234 Gazel, Home Grown design

Gazel is an exciting Irish start up which using clever Irish design for its range of homecare products. Originally a spinout out of National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin’s Origin8 centre, Gazel was formed by award winning Irish designers Ronan Murphy and Kevin Doherty and has the motto Rethink The Everyday to bring innovation, ease and elegance to household items such as clothes hangers, hooks, lamps and kitchenware. As Christmas approaches the company delivers worldwide and will prove to be one of the brighter lights in next year’s Year of Irish Design.

Day 233 Welcoming Hoxton Ventures

Hoxton Ventures, a venture capital firm focused in bridging the gap between Silicon Valley and Europe have just announced a new €6M ($7M) fund exclusively for Irish early stage start ups. The London headquartered has brought on board one of Ireland’s top techstars, Dylan Collins to help with investments. Dylan currently running SuperAwesome previously was involved with Jolt Online (acquired by Gamestop) and DemonWare (acquired by Activision). Read more here.

Day 232 Dublin ranked 27th most reputable city

Dublin has outranked Berlin and San Francisco in City Reptrak 2014 index, which ranks 100 cities across a wide number of indicators including business environment and administration compiled by The Reputations Agency and Reputation Institute. Dublin ranked highly for the beauty of city amongst other attributes. Read more here.

Day 231 Irish artist wins Turner Prize

Dublin born artist Duncan Campbell has won Britain’s top art award, the Turner Prize worth €31K ($37K). Campbell’s Turner Prize winning work is at IMMA in Dublin as part of a major show until March 29th. His prize-winning entry, a 50-minute-long film titled It For Others which explored and lamented the colonial commercialisation of African art. His previous works have including studies on the IRA and martyrdom. Previous Turner Prize winners have included Gilbert & George, Anthony Gormley and Damon Hirst. Read more here

Day 230 AventaMed revolutionizing Children Ear Surgery

Cork based medical start up AventaMed has developed a novel ENT device for the placement of tympanostomy tubes (grommets). Grommets are commonly used solution for childhood conditions such as glue ear or repetitive ear infections and allow the maintenance of normal middle ear pressure by allowing air to flow to prevent pain from pressure build up. This device will place a grommet in under 1 second and will allow the procedure to be carried out in a doctors office without the need for traditional general anesthetic. The company recently won Intertrade Ireland’s SeedCorn competition worth €100K in funding, other awards include MedTech Idol at IN3 Dublin. Read more here.

Day 229 Click Clinic, Hailo for Healthcare Professionals

Ellevyn Irwin, a keen sportswoman and Physiotherapy student, often felt the frustration of not being able to get to see healthcare professionals when she needed or at a convenient time. Through this frustration she created Click Clinic. The App links clients with non-serious conditions with their nearest, available healthcare provider. The healthcare professional comes directly to the patient and clients can make their choice through ratings and reviews of the professional. Donegal native Ellevyn recently won the Donegal final of Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur (IBYE) competition. Ellevyn sees Click Clinic as potential model to cut health service costs by assisting with reducing waiting lists, patients missing appointment or delaying treatment. Read more here.

Day 228 Equilume gallops ahead with new technology

Equine start up Equilume has secured €550K ($685K) seed funding to assist with expansion of its Light Mask range and technology. The University College Dublin spin-out has developed a mask which provides the optimum level of blue light to a single eye of a mare to advance her breeding season, prevent long gestations and ensure reproductive activity in early foaling mares. This has proven to be a big hit with the international breeders market as it allows more efficient reproduction. Read more here.

Day 227 Irish Startup Hemanua helping in the fight against Ebola

Irish startup, Hemanua based in NovaUCD has created an innovative solution for the treatment of Ebola. Founded by Dan Maher, Michael Flaherty and Frank O’Regan, the company has developed ProBlood CP technology allowing harvesting and the transfusion of convalescent plasma (CP) without electricity and driven only by gravity. This will allow the technology to be used in the remotest and less developed parts of West Africa. The use of CP derived from patients who have successfully fought off the virus can be an effective treatment to those in a life threatening situation. The technology has now entered clinical testing and various NGOs have high hopes for its deployment. Read more here.

Day 226 Ireland tops for International work experience

A Global Talent survey shows Irish people have the most international work experience. An incredible 91% of Irish people surveyed had worked internationally. The survey of 200,000 people from 70 countries by Irishjobs.ie also showed that Irish staff are highly motivated and Ireland is increasingly becoming a desirable location for Global talent. Read more here.

Day 225 Neuromod gets CE Mark

University College Dublin spinout Neuromod Devices has just passed its CE Mark regulatory approval allowing the company to market its first Mutebutton product. Mutebutton button uses sensory stimulation or neuro-modulation to treat or mute Tinnitus. Tinnitus is a widespread condition that affects up to 10% of population with a further 1% have secondary issues. The company plans to launch sales of Mutebutton early 2015 in UK & Europe. Read more here.

Day 224 The Late Late Show, a world record breaker

RTE’s The Late Late Show is the world’s longest running chat show. The show has been running with the same format for 52 years! The current host, Ryan Tubridy will preside over what has become an Irish Christmas institution, The Late Late Toy Show. The toy show is one of most watched Irish TV shows with 1.4 million people tuning and with over 100,000 applying for tickets for the annual spectacular.

Day 223 Katie Taylor wins Gold

Bray based amateur boxer, Katie Taylor has won gold at AIBA World Elite lightweight championship for the fifth time. This is her 17th major championship win adding to her Gold medal at the London Olympics. Her win adds to the overall all success of Irish boxers at the AIBA securing a top 10 position on the medals table. Read more here.

Day 222 Galway Film Fleadh in World’s Top 25

Galway Film Fleadh has been voted in the Top 25 Coolest Film Festivals by Movie Maker. The panel stated that the festival was “A great market to meet industry execs by day, and drink whisky with them overlooking the river by night” Now in its 26th year the next fleadh will be on 7-12th July 2015. Read more here.

Day 221 Irishman become EU’s US Representative

David O’Sullivan has become the EU Ambassador to the US. David becomes the only the 2nd ambassador since the role was created in 2009. A Trinity graduate, David spend his early career in Irish Department of Foreign Affairs before moving to the EU commission rising up the ranks to become Secretary General and most recently COO of the European External Action Service. He presented his credentials to President Obama this week and set about his first task of securing a deal at the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or TTIP talks. Read more here.

Day 220 Ireland leads the world in skilled talent

The IMD’s 2014 World Talent Report has ranked Ireland as top for skilled labour availability and was placed 4th in terms of its appeal as a destination. The overall ranking has Ireland in 6th place punching well above its weight with Global competitors. Read more here.

Day 219 Shane Bergin & DartofPhysics win EU Science award

Dr Shane Bergin, researcher at Trinity College Dublin’s CRANN Institute, has been awarded the European Commission’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) achievement award. The award was in recognition of Shane’s work in communicating Science in fun and accessible way. Shane spearheaded the DartofPhysics campaign, which saw 50 scientists and 300 students work together on eye-catching campaigns to attract the attention and interest of daily commuters on the curiositie of Physics and science. Read more here.

Day 218 Welcoming the Irish Whiskey Museum

The Irish Whiskey Museum (IWM) has just opened its doors in Dublin. Since the first recorded whiskey distillery is Irish (see Day 165) the IWM has a rich vein of stories and artefacts to share about the Uisce Beatha. Set over 3 floors the museum overlooking Trinity College, the IWM has a number of exhibits, talks and whiskey tastings as well as a cafe bar. IWM is set to become one of Dublin’s major tourism attractions.

Day 217 See.Sense, world’s first intelligent bike light

See.Sense based in Newtownards, Northern Ireland has produced the world’s first smart bike light to allow user to adapt for different roads and conditions. Using two sensors (an accelerometer and a light sensor), See.Sense lights allow the lights to flash brighter and faster in poor light condition i.e. dark underpass. Last year the company had successful oversubscribed kickerstarter campaign and have received many awards and rave review from cycle pundits.

Day 216 Irish woman nominated for FIFA Goal of the Year

Irish women’s international Stephanie Roche has been nominated for Fifa Puskás Award for the best goal of the year joining the likes of Diego Costa, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, James Rodriguez and Robin van Persie. The 25 year old from Dublin is the only women on the list and her goal was scored at Women’s National League match between Peamount United and Wexford Youths. Voting for the top goal is on the Fifa.com and francefootball.fr websites. The winner will be announced at the Fifa Ballon D’Or awards ceremony on January 12th in Zurich and Stephanie’s goal can be seen here.

Day 215 FoodCloud's Iseult Ward makes Time's Next Gen Leaders list

Iseult Ward, a young social entrepreneur from Dublin has made the Time magazine’s Next Generation Leaders list. Iseult along with co-founder Aoibheann O'Brien set up, FoodCloud, which is Ireland’s first food-sharing non-profit company that connects businesses with surplus food to charities in need via their app. Iseult is the only Irish person and one of 7 globally to make the list. The organisation also were awarded the social impact award by Social Entrepreneurs Ireland this week and hope to expand their service to alleviate food poverty and wastage in other geographical regions. Read more here.

Day 214 Brewbot, the brewing disruptors

Belfast based startup, Brewbot democratises brewing allowing any smartphone owners to set up and control their very own microbrewery. Through the supply of automated brewing equipment or robot and a sensor allowing the control of conditions, recipes and ingredients supply via a smartphone or tablet. The company had an successful kickstarter campaign in 2013 and oversubscribed seed round last month raising $1.5 million led by Bebo founder, Michael Birch with Federico Pirzio-Biroli, Bullet Time Ventures, Hallett Capital, TechStart NI, Galvanize, and SparkLabs Global. The robot costing $4000 is now available for preorder and is set to take the home and small scale brewing world by storm.

Day 213 Europe’s Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Hub

Today saw announcement that Bristol-Myers Squibb will invest >€720 million on a new factory in Dublin that will employ 400 people. This is another validation of Ireland’s place as Europe’s hub in pharmaceutical manufacturing especially in new therapies such as biologics. Ireland current has manufacturing sites for 8 out of 10 of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

Day 212 Celebrating Irish Social Entrepreneurs

Social Entrepreneurs Ireland (SEI), an organisation which provides funding and support to social entrepreneur-led projects addressing societal challenges in a new or better way awarded 9 social entrepreneurs €600,000 at their 10th annual Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Awards. SEI presented three Impact Award Winners worth €140,000 each to social entrepreneurs Iseult Ward and Aoibheann O’Brien of FoodCloud, Elizabeth Waters of the Virtual Community College and Karen Leigh of special needs charity Sensational Kids. Previous impact include Coderdojo and NeuroHero.

Day 211 Transatlantic Football Special

James McDaid & Sons have been supplying soft drinks to kids & adults since 1949. Their iconic leading brand Football Special is a mixture of 7 different flavours, a special ingredient as well as Donegal water. This was developed to celebrate the victories of the local Swilly Rovers football team. The family have recently taped into the diaspora market by launching operations on the US East Coast with Football Special, Smooth Banana, American Cream Soda and Exotic Pineapple. They are hoping expand their markets to other US communities by launching Spanish version of Football Special soon.

Day 210 Celebrating Boolean Logic

George Boole was the first Professor of Mathematics on what was to become University College Cork in 1849. With his seminal work in 1854, he created the field of Boolean algebra which 160 years later has been cornerstone of the all advances in the digital world. The city of Cork is gearing up to celebrate the 200th anniversary of George Boole birth and the city position as the birthplace of the digital age. Read more here.

Day 209 Inhance Technology leads the way in Deloitte’s Fast 50

Cork based Inhance Technology has seen a growth rate of 1481 percent over the last 5 years to become Ireland fastest growing company. Inhance Technology has a unique all-in-one solution that supports the customer experience throughout the complete lifecycle of their smartphones and tablets. This year’s Deloitte Fast 50 saw average growth of 276 percent and the winners generated approximately €350 million in total annual revenues in 2013.

Day 208 Restored Hearing: From BT Scientist to World Stage

Restored Hearing is a startup focused in helping the 300 million people affected with tinnitus. The idea originally came from BT Young Scientist 2009 runner’s up Eimear O’Carroll and Rhona Togher after completing their degrees decided to focus on developing an online sound therapy that can reduce tinnitus by 15% after just one month. The company which is a part of the Wayra accelerator in Dublin is launching wireless headsets to accompany their online subscription service in the UK next month with other markets and standalone products for the elderly to follow.

Day 205 L

Day 205 Love & Robots: democratising 3D Printing

Dublin based Love & Robots is allowing 3D printing to be brought to the masses. They have an interactive design platform that connects customers with personalised 3D printed products such as silver or gold jewellery, phone cases and clocks. Set up last year by sisters, Emer, Kate, and Aoibheann O’Daly the company has secured $1 million in funding and a major contract with Amazon. The company was also the highlight of the Web Summit winning the ESB Spark of Genius Prize. Read more here.

Day 204 Ireland leading EU-28 with growth of 4.6%

Ireland is due to lead Europe in terms of growth, the Europe Commission predict 4.6% in growth in 2014. This growth rate outstrips the other 27 EU states. Commission VP Jyrki Katainen especially praised Ireland’s performance. “Ireland, by doing what was necessary to do, has regained confidence back, which means that private investors can trust in the country’s future . . . which means more jobs for the ordinary citizens.” Read more here.

Day 203 Dublin Web Summit – the best technology conference on the planet

Dublin Web Summit kicks off today at the RDS and will see over 20,000 people from over 106 countries. The event will showcase various technologies and keynote speakers will include Bono, Peter Thiel, Brendan Iribe (CEO , Oculus VR), Werner Vogels (CTO , Amazon) and 500+ more speakers.

Day 202 Adama Innovations scopes out seed investment

Adama Innovations, a spin out of Trinity College Dublin and alumni of the NDRC Venture Lab programme has just secured €750,000 in seed investment from syndicate including Enterprise Ireland, NDRC VentureLab and Irrus Investments. Adama’s first product is a ‘nano-scale’ probe fabricated from diamond, used in atomic force microscopy (AFM). AFM allows for the imaging, measurement and manipulation of materials at the nano or atom scale. The company sees a wide range of applications from medical devices to microelectronics. Read more here.

Day 201 Stripe & Western Webs collaborate for new Charities donation App

Irish payments powerhouse, Stripe have co-developed a new app, Tengo with Galway based, Western Webs. Tengo will allow charities to bypass text-based campaigns so that charities receive 100% of donations. Traditionally, charities have lost up to 30% of donations due to fees charged by telecommunications operators and regulators. Tengo will be launched this Thursday at the Web Summit will charge charities who handle their own account a nominal fee of €1 per month or 5% if Tengo handles their transactions. Read more here.

Day 200 Grainne Barron & Viddyad win Global Entrepreneur award

One of Ireland’s leading emerging companies, Viddyad founder, Grianne Barron has just been awarded the International Entrepreneur of the Year at the Association of MBAs (AMBA). Viddyad is an automated cloud-based video ad creation tool for businesses to create their own ads. The company has had success on both sides of the Atlantic and have been listed in WSJ as “Ones to Watch!” and Grianne was an alumni of the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.

Day 199 Dublin girl wins EU Digital Girl of the Year!

Lauren Boyle, 9 year old from Dublin has pick up the EU Digital Girl of the Year. Lauren is founder of Cool Kids Studio, which showcases the websites she built. She is also mentor at CoderDojo, where she teaches Scratch, HTML and CSS. Lauren was presented with the award in Rome at the European Ada Awards ceremony in Rome which was a part of the e-Skills Making a Career with Digital Technologies event. Lauren had previously won the Next Generation Award for Excellence at the Irish Internet Association’s Dot IE Net Visionary Awards. Read more here.

Day 198 Ireland tops the FDI polls

Ireland has topped the poll on the IBM 2014 Global Location Trends report. Ireland is the most attractive when it comes to the quality and added value brought by foreign direct investment (FDI) projects coming into the country. Ireland is one of the top 4 of global destination countries by estimated jobs - per million inhabitants. Dublin is also in the top 10 of destination cities for FDI in the world, based on projects won. Read more here.

Day 197 Eagle Alpha lands on further funding

Eagle Alpha is a Dublin based start up which collates and analyses social media for stockbrokers, hedge funds and other investors. Set up by former Morgan Stanley investment banker Emmett Kilduff the company has just raised $1.2M from investors and advisory panel include UBS, Barclays Capital, CQS, Deutsche Bank, Schroders and Twitter. The company has also recently hired Evan Weaver, Twitter’s former technical architect, to assist in the further development of the platform. Read more here.

Day 196 Powerful Yogurt building up for launch

Powerful Yogurt is the first product from Kildare based start up Irepak. It will be the very first high-protein, fat-free yogurt made in Ireland from the very best of Irish milk. The founder, Robert Doyle wanted to developed a natural source of high protein without any sweeters or additives. The company is an alumni of Bord Bia’s foodworks and the product is due to hit the stores and gyms next month and the company hopes to employ 10 people within the next 18 months. Read more here.

Day 195 Having Big Ideas on Cancer

A scientist and surgeon at University College Cork have team up to come up with better treatments for Cancer. Dr Declan Soden and Mr John Hinchion are developing a combination therapy using an electrical device (electroporation) to improve the access for chemotherapy drugs. Electroporation allows cancer cells to become porous allow the drugs to enter and this technique can be used for hard to treat cancer such as lung cancer. This is just one of the projects being showcase at Enterprise Ireland’s Big Ideas Conference held in December. Read more here.

Day 194 Hozier, taking the world to church

Hozier or Andrew Hozier-Byrne has been leading Irish music exports this year. His music has had 70 million downloads and his debut album has entered the US billboard charts at No 2. He has also had storming performances on Letterman and Ellen. Spotted at school concert by Caroline Downey, co-owner, MCD promotions, he is set to be become one of the cool aspects of Ireland’s export economy.

Day 193 Cork Jazz Festival Swings into gear

For the 37th time this bank holiday will see the Cork Jazz Festival bring 1,000 musicians from 18 countries performing in various venues around the city. Top much see acts are jazz-diva Carla Cook, Imelda May, Dianne Reeves, Ginger Baker, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Carla Cook, and Ed Cherry. The festival is estimated to bring €15M into the local economy.

Day 192 Mark Roden from Ding, EY Entrepreneur of the Year

Mark Roden, founder and CEO of Dublin headquartered Ding (formerly Ezetop) has won this year’s EY Entrepreneur. Ding is a mobile payments firm which allows the mobile user to have instant credit top-up for their phone from anywhere in the world. The company has grown 3,600% in the last 5 years with revenues > €200 million, and has offices in Miami, Dubai, San Salvador, Bucharest and Dhaka, Ding employs 200 people and has users in over 130 countries. Read more here.

Day 191 VentureLab launched for Science commercialization

VentureLab run by the NDRC is seeking to fund up to€100k to enable commercialization of high potential science, technology and intellectual property. Through an intensive programme of mentorship and guidance they enable companies flourish from research roots. Alumni from the programme include Silvercloud Health and Artomatix. Investment decisions will be made in December and find out more here.

Day 190 Helping in the fight against Ebola

Dr Damien Thompson a lecturer in the department of physics and energy at the University of Limerick along with colleagues at MDEA-Nanoscience in Madrid and IBM Zurich are developing a new medical senor that can detect infectious diseases such as Ebola and HIV down to the molecular level. This will allow the cheap, quick and reliable testing of Ebola to allow for management in outbreak situations. His work has just been published in the prestigious Nature Materials Journal. The team are hoping to start using the sensor clinical samples shortly to allow the device to be use as a diagnostic tool. Read more here.

Day 189 Ireland in Lonely Planet’s Top 10 to visit

Ireland has taken the 5spot in Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2015. The guide states “Ireland is stunningly scenic, its traditions – music, dance, whiskey and beer – firmly intact and the cosmopolitan, contemporary Irish are just as friendly and welcoming as their forebears were known to be”. The guide judges countries on if something special going on that year, if that there’s been recent development and a lot of buzz about the place, or that we think it’s up-and-coming and suggest travellers visit before the crowds do. Read more here.

Day 188 SFI invest €250M in 5 new research centres

Science Foundation Ireland will initially invest €155M with additional €90 million in cash and in-kind contributions from industry partners such as Intel, Google, Microsoft, Medtronic Vascular Galway Ltd, Xilinx, Huawei and others in developing world class research centres. These world class research centres include:

Tomi Reichental holocaust survivor and reconciliator has won the inaugural Voxpro Diplomat Global Achievement Award. Tomi is one of two remaining holocaust survivors in Ireland and been deeply involved in reconciliation work in Irish schools promoting tolerance, respect for difference and the rejection of racism and discrimination. Tomi has been an author and documentary maker. He was chosen for the award from a shortlist suggested by up to 100 ambassadors and honorary consuls in Ireland. Read more here.

Day 186 SiSaf, Belfast Biotech with Global Ambitions

SiSaf is innovative biotech which uses bioactive nanosilicon to allow active compounds penetrate deeper into skin layers. Their lead treatment for Acne was shown have a 95% improvement of Facial Acne in a clinical trial. The global acne treatment market is worth estimated $3.5bn. The company which is a ‘spin in’ of the University of Ulster has also a base at the Irish Innovation Center in San Jose and has attracted investors from both sides of the Atlantic.

Day 185 Digital DNA boosting N.Ireland’s Digital Economy

This November will see the second running of Digital DNA, a weeklong series of events from 4th to 7th focusing on boosting the emerging Digital Economy in the North. The showcase event will be a business conference held at the Titanic centre in Belfast on 6th featuring networking and keynote speakers such as Shane Nolan, Director UK & Ireland SME, Google, Colm O'Neill, CEO, BT in Ireland, Dennis Bree, UKI Sales Manager, Twitter, John Conway, Meteor Electric, Edgardo Savoy, Head of Retail Technology, Paddy Power, Rich Dale, CEO, Flowlens, Niall Harbinson, Founder, Simply Zesty, entrepreneur and author. Further information and tickets can be found here.

Day 184 Drop gets funding to scale

Dublin based internet of things startup, Drop has raised $2 million in seed funding led by Frontline Ventures and Innovation Works, with additional investors including PCH, Vegas Tech Fund and WI Harper Group. Drop has created an iPad-connected kitchen scale that guides users through recipes. The Bluetooth connected scales allow adjustments to recipes in real time according the stock cupboards of the user.

Day 183 Cork Young Scientists on Time’s most influential teen list

Time’s list of The 25 Most Influential Teens of 2014 includes Cork teenagers Ciara Judge (16), Émer Hickey (17) and Sophie Healy-Thow (17) from Kinsale Community School in County Cork, added this accolade their other achievements including the 2013 BT Young Scientist award, Biology Prize at European Union Contest for Young Scientists and the Grand Prize at Google Science Fair, for their research project on Combating the Global Food Crisis: Diazotroph bacteria as a cereal crop growth promoter. Read more Ireland’s top young scientists named among world’s most influential teens.

Day 182 GenCell, another bio-instrument winner from Limerick

GenCell Biosystems was set in 2011 to develop instrumentation for next generation genomic sequencing. The Limerick based firm developed a robotic system for processing DNA using “liquid-cell technology”, which involved synthetic cells mimicking nature. After only 3 years, the company has been acquired by US multinational Becton Dickinson. GenCell was founded by researchers from a previous Limerick bio-instrument success story, Stokes Bio which was acquired by BioRad in 2010. Read more here.

Day 181 Techstart Supporting NI’s Tech Start Ups

Techstart NI is an INVEST NI initiative run by Pentech Ventures to provide support for early stage tech businesses and university spin-outs. The £23.6M initiative is made up of £13M SME equity fund, two university funds of £1.5M and a proof of concept fund of £7.6M. The fund has already made a £300K investments into Brewbot and Inflyte. Read more here.

Day 180 Wild Atlantic Start-Up showcasing West Coast innovation

The Wild Atlantic Start-Up (#WASup) was the brainchild of BlueChief’s CEO, Shane McCarthy to create a start-up network to showcase and promote the technology, innovation and start-up along Ireland’s West Coast. WASup hopes to demonstrate that the west coast is not just for tourist but a great place for people to be inspired by technology and start ups and live the Wild Atlantic lifestyle. The group held a successful event in Limerick in May and will be hold there next event in Tralee on 17th Oct. For tickets and information see here.

Day 179 Cork producing the next generation of entrepreneurs

Over the year, has seen the emergence of exciting young entrepreneurs from Cork. Sarah Dineen from Uniwink.com , has seen her company rapidly grown out UCC Ignite programme to be Ireland’s leading Student peer to peer learning platform. Another successful young UCC Ignite alumni, Richard Barrett together with his business partner Ross O’Dwyer founded Pundit Arena, a media platform which empowering aspiring journalists and articulate sports fans to write about the sports they love. Pundit Arena now has a fanbase across the world and is in the premier league of content producers. Both Sarah and Richard were recognised this week as Cork City and South Cork Young Entrepreneurs of the Year.

Day 178 Accenture opens FinTech Innovation Lab in Dublin

Accenture have announced that will be giving six start ups the opportunity to be a part of 12 week accelerator focusing on early stage tech companies looking to sell products and solution in the financial sector. The Fintech Innovation Lab has been previously successfully run in New York and London and will involves mentorship and interaction with AIB, Bank Of Ireland, Ulster Bank State Street, Fexco, Realex, Paypal and Google.

Day 177 LinkedIn doubles workforces and builds new HQ

LinkedIn is set to double its workforce in Dublin to 1200 staff. The company has just purchased a new site in Dublin to expand its international headquarters in the city. "Dublin is now home to a very vibrant digital technology sector and with that comes an important ecosystem for companies like ours as well as the strong pool of talented digital professionals that we need access to in order to further grow our operations in the future," said Sharon McCooey, senior director with LinkedIn Ireland. Read more here.

Day 176 5.3% GDP Growth predicted

Influential Irish independent think -tank Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) have produced an upbeat forecast of Irish economy with expected 5.3% growth in GDP suggesting further budget cuts may now be necessary. The ESRI also were upbeat on future unemployment figures. Read more here.

Day 175 Celebrating Women in Business

Yesterday saw Women Mean Business awards in Dublin. Celebrating the leading lights and role models in Business. This year saw Anne Heraty, CEO, CPL Resources, named Businesswoman of the Year 2014. Ramona Nicholas of Cara Pharmacy received the Female Entrepreneur of the Year award, while To Russia With Love founder Debbie Deegan won in the Social Entrepreneur category. Other award-winners included Paula Fitzsimons of Going for Growth, who received the Empowering Women award and Pharmapod founder Leonora O’Brien, took the Woman in Technology Award. Read more here.

Day 174 SmartInvest to fund StartUp Growth

A $70 million transatlantic investment fund, SmartInvest is hoping to fund 30 startups to help them accelerate their growth and job creation. The fund based out of Meath and Philadelphia will target companies that our looking to expand in US Markets. Two of the funds early investments have already seen the generation of 50 jobs. Read more here.

Day 172 Plotbox – Google Maps for Cemeteries

Plotbox is a Co. Antrim based start up which aims to provide cloud based software management solution for cemetery managers to help the efficient running of their plots. Other features include a “Google Map” feature which allows for high resolution photograph of individual plots. This will allow for relatives to pinpoint here ancestors and generate revenue through the booming genealogy industry. This week the company was award Northern Ireland Science Park Invent 2014 award. Read more here.

Day 171 OxyMem leading Irish Innovators

UCD spin out OxyMem have added the Overall Excellence award from the first ever IP awards to their bulging trophy cabinet. OxyMem was co-founded in 2013 by Prof Eoin Casey and Dr Eoin Syron as spin-out from UCD’s School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering. The company has developed a breakthrough technology for wastewater aeration. They have already won ‘Innovation of the Year’ Award at the 2014 Irish Times InterTradeIreland Innovation Awards and the first Water Innovation SME Award in Europe for Membrane Technologies and have been nominated for Sustainable Innovation category in the 2014 Platts Global Energy Awards.

Day 170 InterTradeIreland creates SME Ambassadors

InterTradeIreland was set up under terms of the Good Friday Peace Agreement to assist in encourage cooperation, commence and trade between small companies in both the North and South of Ireland. Since their launch, they have assisted 25,000 companies leading to the generation of £650 million of trade and 3000 new jobs. 63 SME companies have now been identified as Business Ambassadors status for their innovation and trade which benefits the whole island. Read more here.

Day 169 Giving sports grounds some Irish Green

Sligo firm Support In Sport (SIS) is one of the world’s leading suppliers of natural and artificial turf. They have supplied pitches for Africa Cup of Nations, World Cup finals, the European Champions League and Six Nations Rugby. SIS were responsible for the returfing of Barcelona’s Nou Camp and Real Madrid's Bernabeu. They posted revenues €37 million this year and hoping to supply the pitches for the next world cup in Qatar.

Day 168 Tourism soars with new highs

Fáilte Ireland have released survey results showing positive sentiment within the Irish tourism industry is at a new high with levels returning to pre-crisis levels. Operators have seen large increase in visitors coming from US and Germany. The Wild Atlantic Way marketing campaign has been cited as a major factor in attracting German visitors.

Day 167 Sigmoid Pharma soars on new investment

Dublin City University Invent centre based, Sigmoid Pharma has just announced a further €5million from Pendopharm, a division of the Canadian Pharmascience Inc. Sigmoid are the pioneers of SmPill® technology which allows for safe drug delivery of previously problematic compounds. The company is currently in late stage clinical trials of a drug for treatment of Ulcerative Colitis and the partnership with Pendopharm will allow for the commercialisation of this product in Canada and potential the whole of North America.

Day 165 Home to the World’s Oldest Licensed Whiskey Distillery

Bushmills Whiskey based in Bushmills, Country Antrim, Northern Ireland is the World oldest recorded Whiskey Distillery. Originally licensed by King James I to Sir Thomas Phillipps in 1608 using the waters of Saint Columb's Rill which is a tributary of the River Bush. The still is depicted on the Bank of Ireland £5 notes and the visitor centre seeing over 120,000 visitors. Bushmills is one of Diageo’s strongest growing brands with last year seeing 7% increases in sales with strong growth in Germany, Russia and Eastern Europe.

Day 163 Fountain Healthcare scores another success

Irish Venture Capital firm, Fountain Healthcare have continued their winning streak with the acquisition of their portfolio company, Civitas Therapeutics by Acorda Therapeutics for $525 million. Civitas was a spin out of Alkermes, which acquired Elan Drug Technologies in 2010. Civitas is developing an inhaled form of the drug levadopa that is used by Parkinson’s patients in tablet form and was expected to have an oversubscribed IPO this year leading to the firm becoming one of the top lifesciences firms on NASDAQ. Fountain Healthcare already had a successful IPO with the Swords based Mainstay earlier this year.

Day 162 Producing world class young scientists

This week has seen young scientists from Ireland compete successfully on the global stage. Cork school girls Ciara Judge, Sophie Healy-Thow, and Émer Hickey, Fifth Year students at Kinsale Community School in Co Cork took home the top prize at the Google Science Prize with their work on bacteria in cereal crops. While Paul Clark, Winner of 2014 BT Young Scientist competition tooksecond place in Mathematics at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists. Read more here.

Day 161 Annual Ploughing Pilgrimage

Today sees the launch of the 83rd Annual National Ploughing Championships at an 800-acre site at Ratheniska, near Stradbally, Co Laois making it Europe’s largest outdoor exhibition and agricultural trade show . President Michael D Higgins will formally open the three day event which is expecting over 200,000 visitors spending almost €40 Million. Read more here.

Today will see the men from Kerry and Donegal battle it out for the All-Ireland Senior Gaelic Football Championships or the Sam Maguire Cup. The competition started in 1887 has recently been described by the National Geographic magazine as in Top 10 experiences of a lifetime. So the best of luck to both teams but especially the guys in green & gold!

Day 158 Combining forces to be a global force in IOT

Two of Ireland’s most successful institutes, Tyndall National Institute and Waterford Institute of Technology’s Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG) have come together to target €82M Horizon 2020 funding to create 10 new start up focusing on Internet of Things (IOT) across several industry sectors. This funding will allow Ireland to global leaders in the new wave IOT technologies and companies. Read more here.

Day 157 A warm welcome to Kevin O’Malley

Last night the US Senate approved the appointment of Kevin O’Malley as the new US Ambassador to Ireland. His Excellency is an Irish-American lawyer from St Louis, Missroui, with his grandparents hailing from Westport, Co. Mayo. He will be taking up residence in Deerfield Residence in the Phoenix Park shortly.

Day 156 Nutria, using family to inspire innovation

A University of Limerick student, Darren Lehane has just won the Irish leg of the James Dyson Award and will now go through to the international finals. Darren developed the Nutrica feeding tube system for patients who can’t ingest food properly after witnessing the issues his newly born niece had keeping the feeding tube in place. Darren developed a system to ensure that feeding tubes can be keep in place so prevent complications or skin irritation from using adhesive tape. By winning the award Darrren is hoping to initiate the commercialisation of this product. Read more here.

Digit Games Studios is responsible for the biggest budget Irish mobile game. Their game called ‘Kings of the Realm’ transports players back to a medieval world. The game cost over one million Euros to produce and the company is confident that they will reach one million downloads on their first month after the launch a couple of weeks ago. They have also signed a book concept deal with Penguin to further develop their fantasy story. Digit Game studios currently employs 20 people and recently received €2 million in venture funding from Delta Partners.

Day 153 Cristina Luminea & ThoughtBox leads the way with European Pioneers

E-learning platform, ThoughtBox and Cristina Luminea have selected to be the UK & Ireland partner for European Pioneers. This is a virtual accelerator with €4.5M funding focusing -learning, pervasive gaming, smart city services, and socially connected TV using technology already available in the European Comission. Companies over the 8 month programme will receive between €50,000-€250,000 equity free funding and access to state-of-the-art European FIWARE and FICONTENT platforms as well as business mentors. 5 Irish companies will be selected this year with further 20 next year. Read more here.

Day 152 FCR Media innovates with StartLocal

FCR Medical, the well known publisher of Golden Pages and Europe’s leading provider local search and advertising across 12 countries has as set up a start-up incubator at its Dublin offices aimed at supporting start-ups focused on creating innovative tech solutions for local merchants called StartLocal. The company will provide a collaborative space for up-and-coming tech start-ups to grow their businesses over six months. The companies will also be able pitch to all of FCR Media 12 European CEO as we as receiving sales and marketing advice from members of the Dublin Team. So far the incubator is home to Bizimply, Fonesense, PopDeem, Spruced.ie, Open WiFi and Holvi.

Day 150 Ireland leading Europe in industrial output recovery

Latest figures released by Eurostat have saw Ireland having the largest rise within the Eurozone of 11.3% in industrial output. This rise was led by a surge in Pharma exports. Across the Eurozone the industrial output increased by 2.2% in July. Read more here.

Day 149 World Sport Team - You’re still part of the team

World Sport Team was set up in 2012 by Eamonn Sayers, with the ambition to create the world’s first all inclusive sporting community to bring sportspeople together – regardless of age, skill level, profession, country, language, religion or race. With their motto “Sport has not forgotten you. You’re still part of the team.” they are seeking to provide first rate services to any person who suffers catastrophic injury while playing sport. By organising new events such as International Sports Day and World Sports Week they hope to strengthen the bonds within the Global sporting community. So click here to be apart of the world’s largest team!

Day 148 Turning Ireland into Makers

This weekend will see the first Hardware Hackthon for the Internet of Things hosted at Dublin City University. Hardware innovators will form teams to devise hardware that will make an impact on people’s lives and their efforts judge at the end. The event is sold out and has been strongly supported by PCH’s Liam Casey, who sees events such as this Hackthon as essential in developing the Maker economy in Ireland’s tech and hardware sectors. Read more here.

Day 147 Welcoming Dublin’s new Start Up Commissioner, Niamh Bushnell

Niamh Bushnell has been appointed to the role of Dublin Commissioner for Start-Ups. This was created due to the recommendation of the Activating Dublin Initiative spearheaded by Dublin Chamber of Commerce and Dublin City Council. Niamh will work Dublin City Council, DCU Ryan Academy, Enterprise Ireland and local enterprise board to ensure strategic responsibility for making Dublin the best place in Europe to start and grow a tech and innovative business. Niamh has a strong background as serial entrepreneur both in Ireland and US and was recently appointed Entrepreneur in Residence at Talent Tech Labs in Manhattan.

Day 146 Disaster Tech Labs using Drones to save lives

Galway based firm, Disaster Tech Labs specialises in developing the latest technology to assist in disaster relief work. Set up my husband and wife aidpreneurs Kate and Evert Bopp, they have recently announced a collaboration with US drone manufacturer, Sentinel Air to co-develop an airborne wireless sensor which drones can use to detect mobile phone signals belonging to disaster victims. This will allows drones to cover large search and enable rescue team to get to trap people and community quicker. These sensors will also allow team to identify areas with functional WiFi infrastructure. Read more here.

Day 145 Creeper Crawlers bringing Innovation to baby clothes

Dublin based Creeper Crawlers was set in 2011 by Ollwyn Moran, a mother of two young boys and a leading Neurological Developmental Therapist to develop products that support and enhance the natural developmental stages of infants by creating healthy body and brain connections. Their first product- Easy Grip Crawl Suit, helps babies get ready to crawl or infants trying to crawl by use of specially designed grips on the baby’s clothing. The company is currently up for several innovation awards for this product and hoping to bring more on stream soon.

Day 144 Trustev lands RadioShack

Trustev, is leading the pack of the new generation of Irish start ups. After winning start up competitions SXSW, EU Commission and START TLV and landing one of Europe’s largest seed rounds. The company with uses data fingerprinting technology to verify a transaction’s validity and the user identity. Run out of Cork and New York, the company has just announced a mass multi-million deal to deploy its platform across all 4,000 RadioShack stores in the US. Read more here

Frontline Ventures has closed a €40 million fund to fund software start ups. Based in Dublin and London partners Shay Garvey, Will Prendergast, William McQuillan with platform manager Kim Pham invests up to €2 million in early stage software-only companies. The firm has previously invested in 7 companies (CurrencyFair, Boxever, Qstream, Raising IT, Drop, BoxFish, Orchestrate and Logentries) and these companies employ 200 in Dublin, London and Boston and Silicon Valley. Read more here

Day 141 Climote takes on Google’s Nest and wins!

Dundalk based smart metering start up, Climote has won a major contract to supply Scottish Power’s 5.6 million UK customers with smart meters allowing them to control their energy consumption remotely. The contract is worth in excess €10 million and in true David and Goliath style, Climote took on biggest players in field such as Google’s Nest to win the contract. Climote was created by ex-Honeywell Ireland boss Eamon Conway and connected homes innovator Derek Roddy and was a spin off out of Sean Gallagher’s Smarter Homes firm. Read more here.

Day 140 Nephin Whiskey seeks to break crowdfunding records

Nephin Whiskey Company is seeking to break the Irish crowdfunding record with a campaign with the Indiegogo platform. The family run distillery based in Lahardane, Co Mayo is seeking to raise $150,000, the largest crowdfunding project in Ireland to date. These funds will be used for the purchase of three to allow production to begin in 15August 2015, the same day as Lahardane’s fair. Funders will be able to reserve special edition bottles and other perks. See https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nephin-whiskey-company-ireland for further details

Day 138 N.Irish made seats rule the air

30% of the world airplane seats are manufactured by B/E Aerospace based in Kilkeel, Co. Down. Employing 800 people, the firm makes a large proportion of the world's first class and business class aircraft seats and with total market for airline seats is well over $4 billion it’s a lucrative business. So the next time you are on a plane you could be sitting on an Irish made seat.

Day 137 Record Whale Sightings to help the economy

Irish Whale and Dolphin Group have recorded record sightings of three separate whale species this year. Large numbers of humpback, fin and minke whales have been reported around the Irish coast. The IWDG predicts that there may be up to 300 humpback whales feeding around the Irish coast. These numbers are cementing Ireland’s reputation as one of the world’s best places to watch whales. Whale Watchers and tourists will bring much needed income to coastal communities. Read more here.

Next week sees the 4th Annual Irish Craft Beer and Cider Festival being held at the RDS. Over 200 craft beer & ciders from all over Ireland will be on display and sampled by the expected over 10,000 attendees. Irish craft beers have seen a real revival in recent years and now own 0.4% of the market and this figure is set to increase as the industry is booming.

Day 134 Lisdoonvarna’s Matchmaking Festival, find love Irish style!

Europe’s largest matchmaking festival kicks off this weekend. Over 50,000 people are expected to flock to the small County Clare town to find their true love through a month long series of dancing, horse racing and traditional matchmaking. The potential couples are matched by fourth generation matchmaker Willie Daly. This year will also see the second running of ‘The Outing’ on 3-5th October for members of the gay community.

Day 133 CoderDojo, a global phenomenon from Cork

CoderDojo is a global non-profit movement. CoderDojo began life in Cork in 2011, when James Whelton set up a computer club at PBS Cork to help his fellow pupils to learn to code. Later that year, Bill Liao, the entrepreneur and philanthropist helped the organisation to expand nationally and international. At each Dojo, young people between 7 and 17 learn how to code, develop websites, apps, programs, games and much more. It is open source, volunteer led organisation and has now expanded to 480 Dojos across 48 countries.

Day 132 Welcome to Udemy

Udemy the world’s largest destination for online courses is setting up its European in Dublin at the Digital Hub. Their online learning marketplace currently has more than 10,000 instructors teaching 18,000 courses and company has raised over $48 million in venture capital and is headquartered in San Francisco. Read more here.

Day 131 Irish SMEs are most successful in obtaining Horizon 2020 EU funding

Statcounter was founded by the 16 year old Aodhan Cullen in 1999 now employs 10 people in Dublin. The company is taking on Google by becoming one of the world’s most respected web analytics firms. By tracking 15 Billion web views per month, the company provides an independent service assessing website performance and adword effectiveness. The company also has a free global statistics service and recently launched a feature integrating Google Webmaster Tools keyword data into its reporting. From Dublin, Aodhan and his team have created a global business with 60% of their customers being US based.

Broighter Gold is the brand name of the Limavady based farmer producing award wining grapeseed oil. Their range has received several awards and has been selected to be stocked at La Grande Epicerie, one of Paris leading food stores and is part of Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche, the world's first department store. The name Broighter Gold comes from Iron age (1st Century) hoard of Gold artefacts found in the townland of Broighter on the shores of Lough Foyle. The hoard included a 7-inch-long (18 cm) gold boat, a gold torc and bowl and some other jewellery. A design from the hoard has been used as an image on British one-pound coins.

Day 123 Galway, home to new start up tribes

Galway is emerging as the new Irish hotspot ecosystem for Startups. The city allows for the mixing of big name multinationals with local Startups with Global ambitions. The lifestyle, infrastructure, access to stunning landscapes and culture is seen as a big pull. Barry O’Sullivan, former SVP at Cisco and now CEO at Galway software start-up Altocloud suggests that “If Ireland is Europe’s new Silicon Valley, Galway is its San Francisco”. Other successful Galway Startups have included Creganna, OnePageCRM, Duolog and Element Software. Recently, Game Golf based in San Francisco and Galway saw President Obama use their device on a golfing trip.

Dublin Spire is a steel artwork designed by architect Ian Ritchie and is the world’s largest sculpture located on Dublin’s O’Connell Street. Completed in 2003, it stands 120 metres high (400 feet) and 3 metres wide (10 feet) at the base and tapers to a 15 centimetre wide with a light beacon at the top. Like many of Dublin’s statutes and monuments the locals have given the Spire several nicknames such as “The Stiffy at the Liffey” and “The Erection at the Intersection” and “The Stiletto in the Ghetto”. Read more here

Day 118 Francis Ford Coppola’s underrated location

In a recent interview in the Wall Street Journal, Francis called Ireland the most underrated destination, stating “beautiful country, and the people are extraordinary. They have such a wonderful literary tradition, one of warmth and humor. Also, Irish ice cream is among the best in the world, which no one knows. Read the full interview here.

Day 117 Irish Women’s Rugby Abú

The Irish women’s rugby team are having a historic world cup in France. After been the first team to beat New Zealand in a world cup match since 1991 they now face England on Wednesday. The Irish team was formed in 2003 and over 3000 woman are involved nationwide. Read more here

Day 116 Dublin, 5th Friendliest City in the World

Dublin has proven its céad míle fáilte credentials by coming in fifth in Conté Nast Traveller list of friendliest cities of the world. This is vast improvement from last year’s 13th. The magazine describes Dublin as a green, lush, and vibrant city. Very walkable and the “kind of place you stop in for a drink in a local pub, only to end up chatting with the locals for the next five hours”. Read more here

A KBC bank and Chartered Accountants Ireland report has shown that Irish companies are hiring has returned to levels last seen in mid-2007. The survey was carried out on 397 responses of chartered accountants working in senior positions in Ireland’s leading companies. Read more here

Dublin Whiskey Company is opening the first whiskey distillery in the city for 125 years. Thirty jobs are expected in the distillery construction with a further 25-30 permanent jobs staffing the new distillery, visitor’s center, café and local gallery. The distillery was set up in 2012 by dentist Ed O'Flaherty and accountant Maria O'Brien and is currently aiming to raise funds from investors, check out their website for further details.

Day 109 Seesearch bringing libraries to your mobile

Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT) lecturer, Dr Hilary Kenna working with lead developer lead David Garvan have launched See Search (www.myseesearch.com), online search tool with an advanced function allowing library customers 24/7 access to the libraries' resources from home or mobile. See Search have secured investment from leading start-up accelerator WAYRA and Enterprise Ireland and seen their product launched in Dublin libraries and hoping to expand their market in the coming months. Read more here.

Day 108 IBEC upgrades its growth forecast

IBEC now predicts the Irish economy will now grow by 3.1% (up from 2.9%) due to stronger than expected exports and show the recovery in the Irish economy is starting to gain momentum. IBEC also suggest that the only €200M of the €2BN of taxes and budget cuts are now required. Read more here.

Day 107 Disruptors gathering in Dublin

Many analysts believe that over 50% of today’s Fortune 500 companies will have disappeared in 10 years time. To see how companies and individuals can respond global leaders in innovation, business and technology will gather this September in Dublin for the Disruptors conference. This will be a one-day business conference that will examine how virtually every industry in the world is being disrupted. Speakers include Margaret Molloy (Siegel & Gale), Raomal Perera (Insead), Kelly Hoey (Cuurio), Clay Herbert (Spindows). Tickets and further info can be found at www.disruptors.biz

Day 106 Clonakilty Black Pudding turning tradition into sucesss

In recent years, Clonakilty in West Coast has became renowned for its Black Pudding. Using Johanna O’Brien’s recipe back in the 1800’s. Colette Twomey started to revive the recipe and tradition after taken over the family butchers in 1977. The firm has taken advanced of researchers at University College Cork to develop new products to allow the company’s products to be stock nationwide in retail giants such as Tesco and 10% of the puddings made are exported. Through Colette’s leadership has led to turnover of €13M and the employment of 42 staff. Read more here.

Day 105 Saying Fáilte to more visitors

Ireland has seen the best year since the recession in term of visitors a CSO survey has revealed. Stats for the first 6 month show visits from UK which grew by 13.6% (1.4 million), 10.6% increase in the number of visits by North Americans (574,500), a 6% (1.2 million) increase from mainland Europe and a 13.6%(425,000) jump in visitors from elsewhere. All major tourist centres are report a lift in activity. Read more here.

John McGuire founded Active Mind Technologies when he moved from Ireland to San Francisco in 2010. Their leading product Game Golf allows through a wearble device for players gather stats on their location of shots, the distance the ball travelled, and club used. This data can be loaded on the cloud and shared with friends. The firm recently had very successful crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo and they also have gained investment from Adidas, Chamath Paliphaitya, Jerry Yang, Ed Colligan, Hosain Rahman, Seagate Technology, ACT Ventures, Enterprise Equity, Cross-link Partners, Moroda Ventures. Sports stars Graeme McDowell and surfer Kelly Slater have also invested. The company still maintains its Irish roots by having its R&D and manufacturing based in Galway.

Clyde Hutchinson has a passion for innovation, entrepreneurship and early stage enterprises. With his company NASC Connect (www.nasc.ie), he works with venture capital/investors, early stage entrepreneurs, incubation centres and universities providing mentorship, organisational development and business development services. He is also involved in developing strong links between Ireland and Israel through the leadership of the Ireland Israel Business Network and FWD Ireland, an organisation connecting Irish companies to top Israeli talent. Clyde is also the Chairman of Wildlife Rehabilitation Ireland (www.wri.ie), a professional body that represents wildlife rehabilitators and the welfare of wildlife in Ireland.

Day 98 Supporting LIFE App, saving lives in rural Africa

Supporting LIFE is a project led by a team at UCC. Focusing on providing low-cost, effective and targeted information using mobile phones in remote & resource-poor areas allow local health professionals access to information. Siobhán O’Connor, a PhD student at UCC, recently has won a prestigious TEDMED Frontline Scholarship, US-based community of researchers, academics and entrepreneurs focused on using information and technology in the service of medicine and health (www.tedmed.com) for a smartphone app which gives “lifesaving support” to medical professionals in remote Africa and present the app at a conference in Washington DC in September.

Day 97 Shimmer, leading partner in wearable technologies

Dublin firm Shimmer Technology is focused in developing applications wearable wireless sensor technology. Use technology originally developed by Intel the company has been developing application for its sensor platform, which monitors movement and biophysical readings. The company focuses on using its technology for medical devices, neuro-marketing, and sport performance. It has been working in collaboration with companies such as Emerge Diagnostics, Kinesis and Telefonica. Shimmer is expecting its revenue to triple next year.

Day 96 Shellfish Butter, iASC provides a World First

Cork based, Atlantic Seafood Company of Ireland – iASC have launched the world’s first Shellfish butter made from Irish mussels, crabmeat and wild seaweed. Using patented pressure technology & process the company has been able to maintain protein structures allowing for the elusive umami flavour to be maintain. This will allow chefs and eager homecooks to enhance the flavour of dishes.

Day 95 Irish Film Industry, the emerging economy & Ardmore Studios

The film production industry is worth ~€170M to the Irish economy and saw 27,000 working on projects last year. Ireland has seen an increase from individual investors in films rise by a quarter, going from 3,372 to 4,217. The Irish government over the last year has given €73.1m in tax relief via its Section 481 vehicle. Ardmore Studios has been one of the key sites with Penny Dreadful, Tudors and Camelot being filmed there.

Day 94 Thinkvisual, a picture can be 1000 words

Cork based, Thinkvisual, led by Naomi Fein and her team of graphic harvesters are changing how companies learn and innovate. Using the art of doodling, they can help team’s visual learning and develop ‘crowd intelligence’ which can transcend differences cultural and language within team. Their clients include KPMG, Trend Micro, Qualcom, Amdocs, Stryker, IDA, Silicon Republic, Smarter Egg and SOS Venture Capital, plus numerous law firms and pharmaceutical companies.

Day 93 DotMed, interface of medicine, technology and the humanities

DotMed conference to be held in Dublin this December will bring together up to 175 healthcare, business and technology professionals, entrepreneurs and investors to expose them to ideas that take place at the interface of medicine, technology and the humanities. DotMed will also have a Start Up competition for early stage medtech companies pitch their business ideas to a global panel of experts and investors later for a €1,000 cash prize.

Day 92, PropelAd, democratising how stores advertise on Facebook

Irish startup, PropelAd has secured seed investment of $650K from Tribal VC and former Facebook vice-president of global operations, Colm Long. The company allows stores to easily and professionally advertise on Facebook allowing eCommerce access to all. They have currently 1,200 clients, including fashion retailer Laci Street, The Net Return and The Loop Loft. With bases in Dublin and Palo Atlo the company is looking to increase its staff from 7 to 15 over the next few months.

The Cork Foundation, a unique fund dedicated to supporting local enterprise and communities focused on driving job creation and developing Cork as the best region in Ireland to start, locate, and grow a business. This December, they will bring together women from both sides of the Atlantic to assist collaboration and networking. Anne O’Leary, CEO, Vodafone Ireland, will be the keynote speaker and the event with host of female leaders from multinational and indigenous companies as well as a delegation of entrepreneurs and business owners from the US.

Day 90 Ceramicx, keeping innovation in the family

Ceramicx, West Cork company founded by a family of innovators focused infrared heating, has now developed an Infrared energy mapping instrument aimed at the aviation, automotive, plastics and composites industries via its new Center for Infrared Innovation. This Center was set up by the founder’s son, Dr Cáthál Wilson and has successful established a partnership with Trinity College Dublin.

Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) has launched a campaign to recruit top international research professors to each of the country’s seven universities. The Targeted SFI Research Professorship Programme 2014 will provide research funding of approximately €5m for each successful candidate across a potential 47 research thematic areas. SFI director general, Prof Mark Ferguson sees “Attracting top-tier researchers will further enhance Ireland’s reputation as a destination of choice for world-class researchers, industrial partnerships and as a location for securing additional international funding,”

Day 87 Gaelic Escargot, Ireland’s only Snail Farm

Did you know there is a global edible snail shortage? In France, Italy and Spain appetites for Snails has created an industry worth ~€0.5BN as snail is low in fat and high in nutrients. Eva Milka from her small holding in Garryhill, Co Carlow is hoping to the first of many Irish snail farmers by exporting 95% of her 10 Tonnes of snails every year as she see Ireland’s climate as perfect condition for growing this delicacy.

Day 86 Translating your World Cup

Researchers at Dublin City University’s Centre for Global Intelligent Content (CNGL) have developed at automated Twitter language convertor which translates English tweets from 12 languages: Irish, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Croatian, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Farsi. Tweets in English can also be translated into these languages. The team have launched this service called Brazilator, in time for the FIFA World Cup’s final stages.

Day 85 Connecting Northern Ireland’s Diaspora powered by IDIRUS

Northern Irish Connections (www.niconnections.com) have launched a new initiative to connect its Global Diaspora to allow for Northern Ireland to take advantage of mentorship, opportunities and to build partnerships. This networking is made possible by new startup, IDIRUS. The company was formed last year by US-based Irish entrepreneur Niamh Bushnell and focuses on mentor matching solution that optimizes what's already in house: talented individuals with the skills, knowledge and motivation to help one another. Read more here

Day 84 Lauchbox.ie, Student Incubator with Global Impact

Today sees the launch of LaunchBox, a 3-month accelerator programme for teams of Trinity College Dublin students with an early-stage business idea. This unique incubator provides coaching, expert advice, seed funding and access to space and facilities needed to test out and launch new ventures. Now in its 2nd year, the programme is seen one of the Top 3 “Challengers” in the UBI Global Ranking of incubators.

The Ireland Funds founded originally as The American Irish Foundation in1963, by John F. Kennedy and Éamon de Valera and merged with the Irish Fund in 1987, it has became the world's largest private organization funding constructive change in Ireland and has raised over $450 million for worthy causes in Ireland and around the world. So on Independence Day we celebrate the help and support from our American cousins.

Day 79 Bank of Ireland Accelerator

Bank of Ireland has launched a new National Accelerator Programme based in Cork starting September 1st 2014. The programme ran as nont for profit by Start Planet will offer up to ten Start-ups, nationwide & internationally, €10k funding, access to Europe’s leading mentors and coaches from a network including Bill Liao and Sean O’Sullivan from SOSventures and Gavin Duffy of Dragon’s Den as well being involved in the new Founders’ Co-op initiative. Application due by 25th

Day 78 Ireland in the Top 10 Global Cleachtech Innovation Index

Ireland has enhanced its reputation in Cleantech by maintaining its Top 10 position in the WWF index. This index highlights Ireland early-stage investment and high-impact cleantech start-ups with companies and organisations such as Mainstream and The Green Way being shining examples.

Day 77 Lusca, Ireland’s only Wine producer

Lusca, Irish for Lusk, meaning 'vault' or 'cave' is a suitable name for Ireland’s only wine produced in Lusk, Co. Dublin. Growing Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Dunkelfelder, and Rondo grape for red wine, and Sauvignon Blanc, Schoenburger and Gewuerztraminer grapes for the white. At present they have a very tiny total production of around 350 bottles per year, and they are hoping to increase that to around 1000 bottles over the next few years.

Day 76 Investing in Diversity, Female Founders Forum

A study by the Kauffman Foundation has found "Women-led private technology companies are more capital-efficient, achieving 35pc higher ROI, and, when venture-backed, bringing in 12pc higher revenue than male-owned tech companies.". Today in Dublin will see a sold out Female Founders Forum organised by Silicon Republic, looking at the future of investment in female-led high-potential start-ups in Ireland. Speakers include Julia Hartz, co-founder and president, Eventbrite, Anne Ravanona, founder and CEO, Global Invest Her and Grainne Barron, CEO and founder of Viddyad.

The NDRC has been listed in top 25 of global business incubators on the UBI Index. NDRC is in the top 2.5% of the 800 incubators across the world. The NDRC was also named last year as World’s Top IT University Business Incubator proving to live up to its logo #bestplacetostart. They are currently seeking Female Founders for their next programme. Read more here

Day 72 Brown Bag Films carries off 3 Emmys

Dublin based animation company; Brown Bag Films has just received 3 Emmys for its Peter Rabbit animation series shown on Nickelodeon. Brown Bag was established in 1994 by Cathal Gaffney and Darragh O'Connell and have successful gathered a number of awards, including nominations for Academy Awards and a host of BAFTA, Emmy and Annie nominations for their shows.

Ireland is the world’s 5th largest Beef exporter. With over 100,000 Beef farms with significant number of specialist suckler beef herds, the industry is worth almost €20 Billion to the Irish economy. It is predicted this week, that the US government will overturn its export ban brought in using the BSE crisis.

Irish people are in the top 10 global consumers of ice cream at 8.4L per person per year which is higher that the ice cream loving Italians. This makes the industry worth approx €200M and increasing numbers of artisan Irish producers such as Murphy’s and Boulabán Farm. So during this hot weather go on have a 99! Read more here

Day 65 Chuck Feeney, My Hero

Chuck Feeney, the Irish-American businessman and philanthropist was presented with the Forbes 400 Lifetime Achievement Award presented by Warren Buffett. Warren cites Chuck as his hero and example for future generations. Through his Atlantic Philanthropies organisation, Chuck has pledged more than $6.5 billion in grants to good causes in Ireland and internationally.

Day 64 Harnessing our Ocean’s Wealth

As an island nation surrounded by ocean, Ireland can use this resource for economic recovery and sustainable growth. Conference today in Dublin has 3 goals in developing strategies for thriving maritime economy, health ecosystems and engaging with the sea.

Every 16th June, Ireland celebrates the literary legacy of James Joyce. The date was chosen due to Joyce’s character, Leopold Bloom, the central character in Ulysses, who spends 16th travelling through the characters and sites of Dublin. This year is of particularly significance due the 100 year anniversary of the publication of his novel, Dubliners.

Day 61 Special Olympics Ireland

The Special Olympics Ireland Games 2014 draw to close today in Limerick. Special Olympics Ireland is a year-round sports training and competition programme for people with an intellectual disability. Over the last few days, 1500 athletes have competed in 14 different sports aided by their 500 coaches and 3,000 volunteers. Read more here

Dublin will host today the second Open Innovation 2.0 Conference. The European Commission/Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group - OISPG, Intel Labs Europe, and Dublin City Council are jointly organising the conference. The conference focus on encouraging innovation through integrated collaboration, shared value, new innovation ecosystems and rapid adoption keynote speakers include Martin Curley, Bror Salmelin and Dan Marom.

The value of Irish whiskey exports will double over the next five years and Irish whiskey accounts for 6% of the global whiskey market. Jameson sales are set to reach €1bn by 2020 with the number of cases sold worldwide each year having risen 1,000% since 1988 and Jameson accounts for almost seven out of every 10 bottles of Irish whiskey sold worldwide.

Day 50 Booming Digital Economy

150,000 jobs are predicted to be created with a value to economy of €22BN by 2020 according to a second UPC Report on Ireland’s Digital Economy released today. This is a massive increase from the current €8.4BN.

This July will see 5 Nobel Prize Winners speaking in Dublin. This will be a part of the first Joint Symposium of the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute and The Weizmann Institute of Science with the focus Medical Research at the Cutting Edge Progress in the fight against Inflammatory Diseases and Cancer.

The World Cup Tech Challenge, organised by the SVForum took place in Microsoft’s head offices in Silicon Valley last week, with 30 companies from 15 countries represented across five categories including medical, educational and mobile technology. Ireland was represented by two exciting start ups FoneSense and Sedicii as examples of the emerging startup ecosystem here in Ireland.

DAY 41 Castle Martyn, welcomes celebrity honeymooners

Irish hotels are renowned with celebrities for their high degree of privacy. This week sees Castle Martyn in Co. Cork welcomes the celebrity honeymooners of Kim Kardashian as they spend this week in Ireland.

DAY 40 Decawave, EU top Angel investment

Startup company, Decawave, producer of location chips which allows for the precise device detection within 10cm has been selected as EU top angel investment. Decawave received over €25M from since its founding in 2007, from US and Irish angel s and investors including Dermot Desmond's IIU, Kernel capital and Enterprise Ireland. The company is expected to have a value of €250M when it goes public in 2017.

Cork firm, Radisens has just signed another deal with the European Space Agency to develop blood testing kits for use by astronauts. This is the second deal with the ESA and allows for the further development for real time testing of astronaut’s blood in space.

DAY 29 Ireland’s Geospatial Information Industry

There’s money in maps! 1677 people are directly employed in the Geospatial Information and it’s an industry worth €280M in Ireland alone. With the increasing digitalisation of the industry its is expected to continue to grow.

DAY 28 Sonru, Disruptive Technology for Talent Wars

Wexford based Sonru (www.sonru.com), uses disruptive technology to allow candidates based anywhere in the world to complete automated video interviews using their own computers. Popular which many multinational and recruiters alike, the company has offices around the world and has been recently covered by Forbes Magazine.

DAY 27 Best for Angel Investment

Ireland has a sophisticated Angel Investment network for the investment and European Business Angel Network last year selected HBAN as the top federation. HBAP has seen notable returns of up to 700% from the recent exits of ActivationEnergy, Storyful and 20 20 Insights.

DAY 26 Giro d'Italia and the World’s Largest Online Bike Retailer

This weekend saw the launch of Giro d’Italia premier cycle race in Ireland for the first time. Making its path from Belfast to Dublin, the race will pass the HQ of Chain Reaction Cycles (www.chainreactioncycles.com), the world’s largest online bike store in Antrim.

DAY 25 Masters of the Eurovision

Despite not qualifying for the finals this year. Ireland is most successful nation in the Eurovision Song Contest winning the competition 7 times and Johnny Logan winning 3 times (twice singing and once as a writer).

DAY 23 MasterCard’s opens new European Commerce Startup Accelerator in Dublin

MasterCard has launched a commerce focused accelerator for innovative early stage European startups with direct involvement from leading partners including ASOS, Capital One, amongst others. Application close 16th May.

DAY 22 Global FDI Centre

Ireland is ranked 10th in world by UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) think tank, with total of $46B invested here last year.

DAY 19 Dublin and Limerick leading investible cities in Western Europe

As Ireland retains its position in Site Selection magazine’s Best Place to Invest in Western Europe. Both Dublin (3) and Limerick (9) are in the top 10 investible cities making Ireland the own country to have 2 cities represented.

Ireland has the highest proportion of young people who have successfully completed third-level education in the EU with almost 36% of young people completing a 3rd level qualification. Read more here

DAY 15 Funding World Class Research

Irish Government through Science Foundation Ireland will pump €47m into scientific research to support 200 researcher positions across 36 research positions involving over 62 companies. This will help ensure Ireland’s place as one the leading Horizon 2020 participants. Read more here

DAY 14 Google’s continued faith

Google will create up to 350 new construction jobs as it is building a second data centre at Grangecastle, Dublin. Read more here

DAY 13 Anatomy in your pocket

Galway based medical education software application, Pocket Anatomy has won the “Boost” award at the The Next Web (TNW) Conference. The app allows for both professionals and the public have a better understanding of the body and healthcare. Read more here

DAY 12 Munster Abú

Ireland shares the most wins in the Heineken Cup with England & France but considering our population we are leagues ahead! Munster Abú! Read more here

DAY 11 Dream Destination

In a TripAdvisor poll of over 60,000 Americans, Ireland has came in the Top 3 Dream Destinations. Read more here

DAY 10 Best place to Invest in Western Europe

Site Selection magazine stated in 2011, that Ireland is best European location to invest measured in terms of business environment, business risks, foreign direct investment and infrastructure. Read more here

DAY 9 Warm welcome to International Skilled Workforce

Ireland has now streamlined its work permit system to allow the country to access top international talent to allow the country to become the “internet capital of Europe”. Read more here

DAY 8 Return of Employment

Ireland now has the fastest OECD growth rate of employment with 60,000 jobs created in the last year. Read more here

DAY 7 Dublin, visit by yourself

The Huffington Post rates Dublin as one of the top destinations for solo travellers due to the friendly pubs and helpful to tourists. Read more here

DAY 6 Fine Horses

To celebrate the Irish Grand National! Ireland is the third largest breeder of thoroughbreds in the world. In excess of 40% of the EU output of thoroughbreds and 11% of the total worldwide are produced in Ireland. Read more here

DAY 5 The Land of Chocolate Lovers

A nod to all those enjoying their Easter Eggs today. Ireland is the land of chocoholics; we have the highest consummation per capita, with 11.2 Kg consumed per person/year. Read more here

DAY 4 The World’s favourite butter

Kerrygold sold over 350 million packets last year. It’s the Number 1 brand in Germany and the top imported butter into the US. Read more here

DAY 3 Irish Biotech leads the way

Heart Metabolics completes $20M Series A funding to bring drugs on the market for Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and other cardio-metabolic diseases. Read more here

DAY 2 Has the World’s Most Flexible and Adaptable Workforce

The IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2012 ranked Ireland in having most flexible and adaptable workforce with is seen as key in attracting the FDI and companies to set up their bases here. Further info here